


Of Fans and Fictions

by Nellied



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fans & Fandom, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Romance, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Identity Porn, Loneliness, M/M, Romance, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-01-24 22:38:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 21,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21345910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nellied/pseuds/Nellied
Summary: "Hey, man!"The stranger's voice was altogether too friendly for somebody who'd just seen the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, renowned vigilante, wanted criminal and generally dangerous individual."Nice cosplay!"And now Matt had to be hearing things. Cos...play? That wasn't a word, was it?"Uh, I'm sorry?""Nice cosplay! You've got the horns and everything!"(Or, How Matt Murdock Accidentally Joined His Own Fandom And Fell In Love Along The Way)
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Comments: 172
Kudos: 454





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This is actually something I wrote a little while ago, but am posting now. It came from me wondering whether the MCU superheroes have their own RPF fandom in-universe, and then it spiralled out of control and became a whole vaguely meta love story about fandom and friendship and secret identities. 
> 
> (A word of warning, though: I will 100% mess with how Tumblr works for the sake of plot. Do not be going into this expecting Tumblr accuracy.)
> 
> Hope you enjoy ^-^

The city was quiet again, and Matt was bleeding. He wasn't unduly worried; it was an old cut above his left eyebrow that must have somehow opened up. Maybe one of the arms dealers had gotten a lucky punch in. Then again, it could just as easily have been down to an ill-timed leap onto a moving truck. Matt had underestimated how fast it was going, and was paying the price already. He suspected he'd have a litany of bruises tomorrow.

Either way, the half-healed cut was a nuisance, but not a nuisance requiring medical attention.  
  
He walked on. The night really was quiet. In the distance, Matt could hear sirens, but they were getting further away. Snatches of conversation reached Matt: drunk students, trying to convince their even more drunk friends to take a taxi with them, late-night radio hosts chattering away to an audience of insomniacs, Spanish-speaking gas station attendants bitching about the night shift. There would be somebody along to replace them soon, Matt realised with a start, noticing for the first time how late it was. The morning shift would come rattling in to open up in half an hour or so. But for now, all was quiet.  
  
In amongst the murmur of early-morning city life, Matt sometimes caught a whisper of something else, something private and lovely and not his to intrude upon. He tried to tune that out as much as possible, and not just for the sake of the lovers' privacy.  
  
He could smell... well, he could smell his own blood inside his mask, and wasn't that unpleasant? He began to reevaluate how much of a nuisance the cut was. It was just in the wrong place for him to reach it, up under the horns of his mask.  
  
He calculated how far away his apartment was. Another ten minutes' walk. The smell of blood intensified, and he could even taste its iron tang in the back of his throat. Dammit.  
  
He listened. He couldn't sense anything in the alley he was in, so he tentatively reached round and undid the strap on his mask, taking it off to wipe the blood out of his face.  
  
As he turned his head to out the mask back on, he heard a tiny inhale.  
  
He froze.  
  
_Shit. Shit shit shit. Shit._ Somebody was there, in the doorway of one of the apartment blocks. He hadn't been careful enough, had been too eager to get the blood out of his face, it was all over, he was done, he'd been caught with his mask off-  
  
"Hey, man!"  
  
The stranger's voice was altogether too friendly for somebody who'd just seen the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, renowned vigilante, wanted criminal and generally dangerous individual. Matt's panic slowly began to fade into something resembling confusion.  
  
"Nice cosplay!"  
  
And now Matt had to be hearing things. Cos...play? That wasn't a word, was it?  
  
"Uh, I'm sorry?"  
  
"Nice cosplay! You've got the horns and everything!"  
  
Okay, not hearing things. Either way, Matt had two options. Run away, and hope the strangely friendly man didn't call the police and identify him, or stay and explain everything.  
  
Matt furiously weighed up the pros and cons of this last option. Pros: less disruptive, probably wouldn't actually take that long, wouldn't leave him feeling like a coward. Plus, he might learn what a cosplay was. (And he might make a friend, suggested a treacherous little voice in the back of his head that he immediately ignored). Cons: basically everything else.  
  
Matt was just getting ready to jam his mask back on and run for the hills, the stranger spoke, and a third option opened up.  
  
"What's a fellow Imp doing out so late though?"  
  
_Ah._ Matt decided to take a gamble.  
  
"I might ask you the same question," he replied, hoping against hope that he'd gotten it right.  
  
To his relief, the stranger laughed. It was a nice laugh, ending in a sort of undignified snort, and all the nicer for it.  
  
"Fair enough. A guy's gotta have his secrets, huh?"  
  
_You don't know the half of it_, Matt thought wryly, and held his tongue.  
  
"Nah, I'm messing with you. I just can't sleep. Didn't fancy a full-on walk, but wanted some fresh air. You?"  
  
"Something like that."  
  
Matt hoped the stranger would leave it at that, and they could both go their own unconventional nocturnal way.  
  
Not a chance.  
  
"Well, it's made my day, and the day's barely begun, so that's good. Or can I say that, if I'm gonna go back to bed? Maybe this counts as my night?"  
  
Good grief, the man was babbling. Matt found it strangely endearing.  
  
"Either way, I'm glad it made you happy." He turned to leave.  
  
"Hey, wait a minute! My name's Foggy... if you, you know, wanna swap details or whatever. Or not. That's cool too. But your cosplay is amazing and I'd really love to see more if you have more? Wait, do you have a Tumblr?"  
  
Wait, the guy was asking about tumblers? Like, whiskey tumblers? He had some of them, but wasn't sure what that had to do with anything.  
  
"Uh... yes?"  
  
"Cool, what're you called?"  
  
"Oh, Matt."  
  
"No, your Tumblr."  
  
What? Matt was definitely missing something. He decided to make up a name for his hypothetical pet whiskey tumbler, like this wasn't the weirdest conversation he'd had in forever.  
  
"Frederick Wilmington the Third," he claimed. He didn't know quite where that had come from, but he quite liked the idea of a whiskey glass sounding particularly posh.  
  
"Oooh, cool. I'll look you up and follow you! Mine's AvocadoMist. Mist because I'm Foggy, and Avocado cause I'm a lawyer." He said this as if it made sense.  
  
"Anyway, see you around!" The stranger- Foggy, Matt corrected, wondering who the hell was named after a weather condition - waved blithely at Matt and turned to head inside.  
  
Matt stood for a second, dumbstruck, before setting off for his apartment, none the wiser, and with the increasing feeling of having dodged a bullet.


	2. Chapter 2

After getting in, Matt had basically collapsed in bed, just barely remembering to set his alarm for the morning before sinking into blissful unconsciousness.  
  
He had woken up feeling not particularly rested, but considerably more human than before he went to bed, which he counted as a small victory.  
  
As he pulled his shirt on, he remembered the conversation from the night before, and briefly wondered whether he had dreamt it. No, it was too real for that.  
  
_Huh_, he thought, tightening his tie. He'd have to be more careful in future, but it could have been worse. The guy seemed harmless, if a little odd.  
  
_You should get in contact with him,_ supplied a treacherous little voice, and Matt quickly left the house, worried that he might take it up on its suggestion  
  
Truth be told, Matt did want somebody he could just talk to in the evening. Foggy the Insomniac was an odd pick, to be sure, but considering that his other evening company was mostly drug dealers and gang members, he'd take Foggy any day. No wonder he was still bothered by the encounter. He was latching onto something - anything - to take his mind off the sad, lacklustre mess that was his life, since-  
  
A passing bus startled Matt and he pulled himself together, feeling a little ridiculous. No point moping. He had a job to be getting to.  
  
But the thought bothered him throughout the day, and he kept finding himself tuning out as his screen reader read him the files for some potential cases. He realised he was drifting when he got halfway through a page before realising that he actually knew the defendant, one of the infamously litigious Johnson brothers.  
  
He pressed rewind and started over, making notes in a vain effort to keep on task.  
  
Instead of focussing on the ongoing saga that was Johnson v. Johnson, however, he found his mind drifting towards cos-play and tumblers and misty avocados.  
  
_Dammit_.  
  
Somehow Matt got through to the end of the day without getting horribly behind, and as a reward - and how pathetic, that he was thinking of this as a reward - he let himself Google the mystery phrases once he got home.  
  
What followed was a whole hour of pure and utter madness, by the end of which he'd learnt that it was Tumblr, not tumblers, that Foggy was enquiring about, that it was a blogging website, that cos-play was more properly written as "cosplay", and was actually to do with making costumes of fictional characters, and, perhaps most strikingly, that he had fans online. Or Daredevil did.  
  
_Not an inconsiderable number of fans_, he added mentally, noting the number of people who were online speculating and joking and... writing about his alter ego?  
  
He felt a sort of morbid curiosity. What the hell did people even write about him?  
  
Half an hour later, he was still confused, but somewhat more enlightened. Turns out they wrote all sorts of things about him. First of all he'd found something called a "one-shot", which mostly was about him prowling round at night. The author had said in a note that they were just trying to improve their writing skills, and that they were going for atmospheric, rather than plot-heavy. Matt didn't much mind that, actually. The writing wasn't terrible, and there was the odd flash of something genius in a few of the turns of phrase.  
  
The gentle start was to be misleading. The next story was described as a "Hogwarts AU" and seemed harmless, if a little strange, but after that it took a turn, with a string of quite long and apparently serialized stories about Daredevil getting pregnant, then one about Daredevil attending an orgy, and then one about Daredevil helping the Avengers out of their latest dust-up, before having an angry threesome with Black Widow and Hawkeye in the SHIELD quinjet en route home.  
  
Actually, he was quite flattered by the last one; people apparently thought he was in a league with the Avengers, romantically speaking. Who knew?  
  
He almost stopped short at one seemingly popular story about Daredevil having his heart broken by a beautiful, dark-haired European. Too close to the truth. She was Italian, in the story, not Greek, but it still struck a nerve.  
  
It seemed pretty harmless, though, and the more Matt browsed, the more he started to guess at some of the words he was hearing. A lot of the pregnancy stories were described as "mpreg" for example, a word that Matt didn't know how to pronounce in real life, because it messed with his screen reader something awful. "Angst" was dark and melodramatic, "fluff" was cute and sugary and "smut" was... well, smut was smut, he supposed.  
  
Although, he noticed, a lot of it involved two men, which was unexpected and kind of neat.  
  
The thought struck him that Foggy - or MistyAvocado - might be a writer of fanfiction. Matt hesitated for a second before searching for his Tumblr account. It seemed wrong, somehow, to read Foggy's stuff, knowing that Foggy didn't know who he was. It seemed far too much like snooping, pressing his nose up against the windows of Foggy's private life and misting up the glass.  
  
He wondered why - It's not as if it had bothered him with the other stories- and decided that it was maybe because they were just names on a page. Foggy, on the other hand, was real. A real-life person with a proper, if unusual, name and a voice that Matt could still hear and a laugh that Matt could probably recognise if he heard it in a crowd.  
  
And then he remembered Foggy telling him they'd swap details, and giving a ridiculous fake name for his Tumblr, which - and he was just realising this - had probably been a mistake.  
  
He could have left it there. He should have left it there, and, all things being equal, he probably would have left it there, had Foggy's weird, imperfect laugh not still been playing in Matt's mind.  
  
Without thinking about it too much, he clicked to register for Tumblr, hoping against hope that it would let him pick the name Frederick Wilmington the Third. He wasn't disappointed. Five minutes later, Matt sat in front of Frederick Wilmington the Third's Tumblr dash, wondering what the hell he was doing.  
  
He was just wondering whether he should post something, and, if so, what he could even post, when his screenreader bleeped to tell him that the page had updated.  
  
He had one new follower.  
  
MistyAvocado.  
  
_Huh_.


	3. Chapter 3

The next week passed by in a blur of work. The Johnson case took off, Matt got a few new cases to look at, including one that was actually interesting and involved squatters rights for people who were left hanging after the Incident destroyed their homes and just moved into other abandoned apartments. Most of it was pretty run-of-the mill though. Property damage. A drunken fight. Workplace negligence.

That was Matt's day job, but he soon found that his nights were occupied by a toxic mix of human traffickers, drug dealers and disorderly drunks, who all seemed to be conspiring to keep him on his feet, popping up at the same time in different corners of Hell's Kitchen.

At least he was getting a workout, he mused, jogging across a rooftop. He needed to keep fit if he was going to impress Clintasha, once they'd all gotten their kit off.

He was caught off guard by the thought. 

Was he seriously still thinking about that? 

The rest of the night passed without incident, and he was ready to write it off as a fluke, but the next day it happened again.

He was just popping in for coffee, when he caught the barista's heartbeat spike. Attraction, he noted, flattered and a little bemused. A good start for a fluffy coffee shop AU, he noted, before wondering how the hell he'd remembered that coffee shop AUs were even a thing.

This couldn't be happening. No way was he being sucked into this online... _thing_.

No way.

But that evening, he found himself logging onto his Tumblr, with his headphones in, so that any hypothetically sharp-eared neighbours - _don't be silly Matt, only you can hear that well, and it's nothing to be ashamed of anyway _\- wouldn't be able to hear what he was doing.

Quickly, and strangely furtively, he searched for Daredevil, and got a wealth of results. People were discussing Daredevil, drawing Daredevil, hypothesising about Daredevil and generally obsessing over Daredevil. 

It was surprisingly intellectual, Matt noted, wondering what he'd been expecting. This post was actually a pretty well-researched dig into the history of vigilante justice, comparing Daredevil to other famously insubordinate heroes, including Captain America, back in the 40s, off rescuing Bucky Barnes. Matt wasn't sure how solid that comparison really was, but it made him smile.

Maybe he should have narrowed it down to fanfiction. That was what was bugging him, wasn't it? Did you even get fanfiction on Tumblr?

But before he could refine his search, the screen reader read him one of the names in the discussion. MistyAvocado. 

MistyAvocado's contributions to the discussion tended to address the legal basis for Daredevil's actions, Matt noticed, remembering with a jolt that Foggy had mentioned being a lawyer. Stupid of him to have forgotten, really. It was just... Matt didn't imagine a lawyer reading or writing this kind of stuff. The thought almost embarrassed him. There shouldn't be any reason for a lawyer not to be involved in this world of fanfiction and blogging. It wasn't as if it was illegal or immoral or anything. _He_ was a lawyer, and he was reading it, after all. 

Then again, maybe that was the problem. Maybe it made it too real. _If this grown-ass lawyer can be so invested in this, maybe I could be too_. It was a scary, weirdly alluring thought, like wandering too close to a cliff edge and wondering if you were going to jump off. Illogical and inadvisable, but damn if you weren't tempted, just for a second, to take the plunge.

Reading further, he was surprised by the stance Foggy took. He'd assumed, given that Foggy was a fan, that he'd be defending Daredevil at every opportunity, but his argument was much more nuanced than that, giving an overview of the ethical and legal grey area that Daredevil existed in, suggesting ways in which Daredevil's intervention actually did some good in the world, before outlining all the ways in which those arguments wouldn't stand up in court.

He pointed out that Daredevil's actions usually led to arrests of genuinely reprehensible criminals, with crime scenes left in a state where evidence would still be permissible in court - something Matt _did_ do intentionally and was actually quite proud of.

Then he outlined a number of cases in which criminals that Daredevil had caught were let off without charges, after having offered the police information about their attacker. After all, they were petty thugs, and Daredevil was seen as a much larger, more prolific menace. Which Matt hadn't ever thought about.

It was staggeringly well researched, and fairly complicated. Matt hadn't followed up on half the cases mentioned, and he felt foolish for having assumed that once he dropped the perpetrators at the police station, everything would be fine.

The other thing that struck him, reading MistyAvocado's contributions to the discussion, was the loving tone of it all, and the complete lack of judgement or outrage. It was critical, but not angry. Or rather, it was angry, Matt corrected himself, but more at the general injustice of a system that let unrepentant would-be sex offenders walk free in order to focus on identifying the lone, misguided idealist who was trying to stop them. It didn't exactly approve of Daredevil, but it wasn't the damning indictment it could have been.

He clicked through to MistyAvocado's main page, hoping to find more meta - _see, he was picking up the lingo _\- and found that the most recent post was some fanart that he couldn't actually see, but whose tags informed him that it was an image of Daredevil at night, tagged both as #problematic fave and #i'm sorry I cant seem to get the horns right 

The fact that Foggy could critique his actions so intelligently and accurately, but was still stressing about how to draw his mask right, made Matt smile.

What blew his mind was the comment that accompanied the picture.

"Just some fanart inspired by a chance encounter the other night. The moon was just right, the street lights were shining off the windows in interesting ways and it stuck in my head somehow. Kinda happy with how this turned out. If you're reading this, mystery stranger, thank you!!! Also, I'm so sorry about the horns, yours were a lot nicer and I'll stop rambling on about that I promise"

It was sweet and he could hear it in Foggy's voice, distracted and friendly and enthusiastic. He almost regretted not being able to see the picture.

On a whim, he found out how to send a message on Tumblr and, holding his breath, dashed off a quick message to MistyAvocado.

"Hey, I saw your artwork."

No, that was lame, plus he _didn't_ see Foggy's artwork and so couldn't really come up with an opinion about it.

"Hey, I read some of your stuff about the legality of Daredevil and was really intrigued."

No, too weird and eager. _Tone it down, Matt._

He briefly toyed with the idea of just throwing caution to the wind. "Hey, I'm actually Daredevil for real, and I'm now on Tumblr because of you, and also I'm really impressed by your fanart that I can't see because by the way I'm blind, what have you done to me?"

Sighing, he settled on a message.

"Hey, it's Matt, from the other night. I remembered your Tumblr and wondered if I should say hi. I've read some of your stuff, as well, by the way, and it's pretty great, especially the legal stuff."

That should do the trick. Friendly, he hoped, but not stalkerish. Interested, but not desperate. 

To his surprise, he got a reply pretty much straight away.

"Aww thanks :) I was gonna message you, but work got in the way and I didn't get round to it, sorry :( "

Then, before Matt could respond, another message.

"I don't suppose you saw my fanart of you? Bc I realised after posting it that might be a little creepy. I promise I'm not creepy."

Matt hadn't even though of it from that angle.

"No worries, I didn't mind," he wrote back, wondering if Foggy was going to ask what he thought of it.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

"Although I'm sorry to say that I didn't see it. I'm actually blind."

There was more of a pause after that message.

"Aw, shit I didn't realise, sorry."

Another pause. 

"So you actually liked my boring-ass legal meta??"

Matt smiled. 


	4. Chapter 4

Once they had figured out that they were both lawyers, the conversation spiralled from there, with the two of them chatting about pretty much everything, from vigilantes to minor workplace annoyances to their favourite coffee order.

Matt ended up telling Foggy the story of the time he'd shown up early for work, forgotten to turn the light on and scared the hell out of Marci when she came in half an hour later and found him working in the dark, with the blinds drawn. 

Foggy, meanwhile, regaled Matt with stories of his family, who had apparently wanted him to become a butcher, and were terribly disappointed in his legal career. Not the normal way that worked, but then again, Foggy never did seem to care much for convention.

When Matt logged off, it was past 10 pm and well past the time when he should have gone out on patrol, but the city seemed quiet, for the first time that week. He breathed a sigh, and took a second to appreciate how still the air seemed.

If anybody had seen Daredevil as he did the rounds that evening, they would have seen him smiling beneath the mask.

He'd expected it to be a one-time thing. Foggy messaged him to be polite, they had a nice conversation, but he wouldn't want to talk again.

So Matt was pleasantly surprised when, the next evening, he logged on and found a new message from Foggy, asking for his opinion on shipping. This led to an animated discussion of what shipping actually was, during which it became clear that Matt was pretty new to this whole "fandom" thing.

To his great astonishment, this didn't seem to put Foggy off at all. Instead, Foggy took Matt under his wing, recommending some other Tumblrs that might interest him, linking through to a variety of fanfictions - _literally everything from crackfic to filth to quirky genderbent femslash AUs to gen casefic, just so you can get a taste for what you like_ \- and a selection of podcasts.

Matt kept it short this time, setting an alarm to remind him to go and guard the city, but the next day, and most of the following days, he was back, chatting with Foggy and gradually learning about this strange, friendly little corner of the internet. They called themselves Imps - small, subordinate devils, somebody once explained to him - and were a mostly local bunch, from what Matt could gather, based in New York, if not in Hell's Kitchen.

He started following a few new people, including one blog called Devil Watch, which mostly kept tracks of Daredevil's nocturnal movements and posted pictures of him in action, sometimes with links to news articles or opinion pieces. It wasn't exactly news to Matt, of course, but it helped him keep track of how visible he was being. Foggy complained that the photos were pretty blurry, which was actually a bit of a relief, and agreed to inform Matt if anything particularly clear or dramatic came up. 

Besides that, he followed a few people who wrote interesting meta about what Daredevil represented to the people of Hell's Kitchen, and how his vigilantism related to the mainstreaming of more commercialised heroes, such as the Avengers. 

He followed one blog that was solely devoted to reviewing Daredevil's appearances as if he were an action star in a superhero film, criticising some of his less glamourous take-downs for being anti-climactic and "poorly-written", or praising the "almost life-like SFX". Another author would write imaginary text conversations between Daredevil and various other public figures. Yet another had written about attempt to knit a Daredevil costume for her cat. Matt couldn't see the pictures, but it sounded adorable. 

It took a while, but in the end, he even started contributing to discussions and leaving comments on fanfic he'd read.

The latter was a recent and alarming development. Meta was one thing, but fic felt like a step further. He was reading invented stories about himself, often in relationships with people he didn't actually know, written by people who didn't really know him, but who felt that it was perfectly acceptable to speculate about his identity, and his appearance and... other more personal things. For the longest time, he steered clear of it.

But after a while, he started to realise that he didn't really mind. He still tended to avoid the more hard-core smut, but generally speaking, he found he was actually okay with people describing his genitals in unnecessary detail. It didn't do him any harm, did it? Sometimes a fanfic was so farfetched it made him laugh, which spoiled it somewhat, but he hadn't been outright offended by anything yet.

The Imps were a strange lot, to be sure, but he was actually pleasantly surprised.

It was at work, maybe a month later, as the Johnson case was finally winding down, that Matt realized that he considered these people friends. 

He'd been chatting to Marci, when she'd mentioned going out with some old college friends to a bar. It was a typical Marci story, complete with lots of tequila, a healthy dose of sarcasm and a certain amount of passive agressive judgement.

"- So I got home fine in the end, but I still think it was a dick move to go home with the bartender."

Matt made a noise he hoped would sound interested.

"I don't know, I haven't actually spoken to her much for a while. But we were best friends, hell, we were room-mates for four years, shouldn't that count for something? I swear, it's like I don't even know her anymore sometimes."

She bustled off pretty soon after that, but her last comment had gotten Matt thinking.

Strange how you could be friends with somebody for years and still not feel like you knew them, and yet you could also be friends for a month and know them like the back of your hand.

He didn't know when he had started filing Foggy under "best friend". But sensing the slight sadness that Marci tried to cover up as she made yet another pot of coffee, he knew he would hang onto Foggy, whatever it took.


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

After that, it became far too easy to push his luck, skirting the fine line between irresponsibly reckless comments and personal in-jokes, simultaneously hoping and fearing that Foggy might one day connect the dots and figure out who Matt really was.

"I'm not saying I'm Daredevil, but have you ever seen me and Daredevil in the same room?" proclaimed one meme that Matt reblogged almost without thinking.

"Justice is blind: Daredevil will get you, regardless of class, wealth and social status" was another article that he reblogged, purely for the title.

"Maybe We're All Imagining Daredvil Wrong". Click. Reblogged.

He genuinely wasn't sure why he did it. On the one hand, his friendship with Foggy was slowly becoming something he couldn't do without. He knew, rationally speaking, that if he came out with it now and admitted he was Daredevil, it would all be spoiled. It would have been a breach of trust.

Matt the Cosplayer and Fandom Noob was one thing. There, there was some level of equality. They were just two guys, sharing a thing they loved. 

But Matt the Secret Vigilante was another matter. It would be an intrusion, he knew. Fandom was, in some ways, a private space, and he didn't want to violate that or make anything weird.

But on the other hand, he sometimes wondered if Foggy would be excited, instead of repulsed or betrayed. He took to imagining scenarios where he broke the news to Foggy and they became partners in crime-fighting, or at least allies of sorts. Then he realised that he was practically writing fanfiction, and stopped that immediately, to avoid the mind-screw that that brought with it. 

Maybe it was just something about having a secret that was - and fandom was the mirror that let him see this for the first time - kind of cool. 

Maybe it was narcissism, as well. He knew that Foggy was a big fan of his, and wanted to experience some of that hero-worship more directly. It wasn't a thought that Matt was particularly proud of, but it was there.

Then he tried to imagine how he'd feel if the object of his fandom admitted they'd read his Tumblr. He'd definitely feel more betrayed than excited. Then he realised that he _was_ the object of his own fandom, and so _did_ in fact read his own Tumblr, and wrote it too. The sheer messed-up complexity of that made Matt's brain hurt, so he shut down his laptop and went out to hurt some petty criminals. 

This line of thought continued to bother Matt for the next few days, until one day he got a message that put it out of his mind entirely.

"So I know we chat a lot online but I was wondering if you'd like the meet up some time irl? If that's not weird, I mean..."

It stopped Matt in his tracks. 

Sure, he'd met Foggy in person once before, but that was before he really knew him, before he'd grown to love the quirky ramblings and ridiculous friendliness that were part and parcel of his friend.

Meeting in real life was a threshold. It was the point at which fandom would become something more than just him chatting online, packed away in the space between work ending and his patrol starting.

Foggy must have sensed the hesitation. 

"I mean we met before so I'm pretty sure you're not an internet weirdo and I promise I'm not either. I just know we live in the same area and it seemed silly not to have met up at some point?"

And then another message.

"But if you're busy or not feeling it, no worries."

And didn't that just kill Matt. Foggy, who was his best friend - _only friend_, the little voice corrected in a rather unfriendly tone - thought that Matt might be too busy to see him.

Suddenly it dawned on Matt that Foggy might be just as lonely as he was. Their situations weren't dissimilar, after all. Similar age, both living in Hell's Kitchen, both lawyers at fairly small local law firms. He'd just assumed that somebody so naturally open and welcoming would have a host of friends. It hasn't occurred to him that Foggy's life might be as monotone as his own. Well, apart from his nocturnal activities, of course.

The thought that Foggy might not have the vibrant circle of real-life friends that Matt had imagined made him a little sad, actually. It cast Foggy's willingness to help out the fandom noob - and hell, his willingness to exchange contact details with a random stranger at like 4am - in a completely new light. 

Without thinking, and slightly ashamed of his previous hesitation, he tapped out a reply.

"No, I'd love to! We could get coffee? I know a place."

From that point on, plans were made and Matt could hardly wait. He fidgeted through work, bumped into office furniture - something he had never done before - and routinely checked the clock, waiting for 5pm to head out and finally meet Foggy.

Marci picked up on something after Matt accidentally knocked his pens off the desk, swore loudly and knocked his chair over while trying to pick them up. Smooth, Murdock.

"You okay? You're behaving like an actual blind person, and it's scaring me a little."

"No, no, I'm fine. Just a little tightly wound today."

"Hmm, well, whoever she is, you should straighten your tie and maybe run a comb through your hair before you meet her."

_Wait, what?_

"Also, Thursday is a weird-ass night for a first date."

_Oh_. Matt stammered an excuse. 

"Aww, don't be ashamed. It'll be good for you, even if it doesn't go anywhere."

And with that she turned back to her laptop, leaving Matt feeling bewildered, and strangely defensive.

It wasn't a date. Just two friends meeting up for coffee. Matt knew that, and logically he should have been fine.

But he'd also consumed enough fic by now to know that whenever a person protested that it wasn't a date, it usually meant that it was, in fact, a date. Even if they didn't realise it at the time. _Especially_ if they were getting all flustered about it.

It wasn't a date, he repeated to himself. But did he want it to be one?

He shut down that line of thought pretty quickly, because if there was one thing he didn't want complicating his friendship with Foggy - _complicating it further,_ the little voice reminded him - it was romantic feelings. 

If he ran a comb through his hair before going to meet Foggy, it was purely a matter of personal grooming. Nothing else.

He was nervous as he turned up to the coffee shop, a small independent place, with the fanfiction barista. He ordered a coffee and made a mental note to stop thinking of the barista like that, then stopped to listen to the room.

There were quite a few people there, but none that he could specifically identify as Foggy. He kicked himself for not having arranged some sort of signal, or a pre-arranged sign. Foggy knew what he looked like, of course, but he had no idea what Foggy sounded like.

Then he caught a slight intake of breath, the same noise that had alerted him to Foggy's presence that night, almost a month and a half ago.

"Hey, Matt!" Foggy's voice was unmistakably relieved, and Matt suddenly wondered if Foggy had been afraid of being stood up. 

"Foggy! Good to finally meet you in person!"

"Yeah, I could say the same. You know, I'd never actually seen your face under that mask. I had no idea if I'd actually recognise you."

And yet he had. Matt didn't know why that made him smile. 

"You've clearly memorised my chin," he joked, picking up his coffee and sitting at Foggy's table.

"What can I say, it's a memorable chin," laughed Foggy, and Matt almost mistook the joke for flirting. _Pull yourself together,_ he told himself sternly.

From there on, the conversation flowed pretty easily. They chatted about anything and everything, from fanfiction to work to other fandoms that Foggy was involved in and wanted to recommend to Matt.

Matt didnt realise he'd been afraid of awkwardness until he felt how relieved he was that they could meet up and talk in person so comfortably. 

He realised how long it had been since he'd done this, meeting up with a friend for purely social reasons. 

He wasn't sure he ever actually had, at least not since Columbia, and that made him frown.

Foggy clearly caught it.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm just thinking about how weird it is that we've never met before," Matt bluffed, not wanting to admit what he was actually thinking. Apparently Foggy agreed, cause he launched into a list of people he knew, and soon it turned out that they had quite a few mutual acquaintances, including, as it turned out, Marci. 

"Yeah, we were at law school together. Had a wild time. We both considered Columbia first, actually, so maybe there's a universe out there where we met at college."

That thought made Matt smile. He imagined nights out with a younger Foggy, or late nights in, studying for finals.

"That would be a pretty good universe," he mused aloud. 

"Mmm," Foggy agreed. "Its funny, I'm kinda glad we met like we did, though. I think if I'd gotten to know you in real life first, I wouldn't be so open about all this fandom stuff. You know, you're the first person I've talked to about it IRL. With everyone else, I'm afraid they'd judge me, and I know that's stupid, but I can't do it. I just like to keep both bits of my life separate, you know? It's like I have some kind of secret identity that I don't want people in my real life to know about, only I've just revealed myself to you, and d'you know what? It actually feels really good to be so open, not having any secrets from somebody, you know?" 

And damn if that wasn't ironic. It was like the universe was setting up a huge joke at Matt's expense, only he didn't find it particularly funny.

There was a lump in his throat and he genuinely didn't know whether he was about to start sobbing, or tell all or turn tail and run away without saying anything, quitting Tumblr forever and leaving Foggy to remember him as that one weirdo who made friends with him before having some kind of breakdown and never resurfacing. 

Before he had to make a decision, Foggy carried on.

"Which reminds me of an AU I was reading yesterday, actually, where Captain America is undercover as a spy. I know its not your usual fare, but its _so_ well written..." and Foggy was off, talking about some author called OffThePage, who was his latest obsession, and the moment had passed.

And after a few minutes Matt could speak again, and was almost certain he wouldn't have another meltdown, and was simultaneously, horribly aware of exactly how screwed he was.


	6. Chapter 6

It was sometime after that that Matt somehow ended up betaing and then writing fanfiction. 

It hasn't exactly been something he'd planned on doing. Instead, it had crept up on him, beginning with Foggy's offhand mention that he was writing a fanfic, would Matt like to beta? 

Matt almost spat out his coffee at that. Once he'd got over the coughing fit that ensued, he thought it over.

His immediate reaction was to refuse, on the grounds of conflict of interest, but it put him in a bind. How could he possibly explain to Foggy, no, I don't want to beta it, just for reasons, you know? At best he'd come off flaky, at worst unfriendly or judgemental. Like he didn't think Foggy's fanfic would be any good.

Which he did. Think that it would be good, that is. He knew that whatever Foggy wrote about him, it'd probably be well-written, sensibly plotted and strong on characterisation to boot. He knew it'd almost certainly be a good read, were it not about him. If any author deserved Daredevil's personal seal of approval, it was probably MistyAvocado. Or OffThePage. Even Matt had to admit that their stuff was good.

_Plus_, the niggling little voice added slyly, _if Foggy writes something about you, face it: you're gonna be curious either way. Betaing is like getting a sneak peek._

So he agreed, and the fic they ended up publishing - a fluffy one-shot about superheroes finding a family in each other - actually did quite well on AO3. One thing led to another, and before Matt knew it, he was meeting Foggy semi-regularly over coffee to discuss posts that had caught their imagination, and plot bunnies that were nagging them.

It was strange, he thought, how normal something like that could become. Yet again, he remembered when he's started out on his night-time strolls, how quickly that had become the norm. After a few weeks, Daredevil's nightly patrols were as much part of Matt's figurative 9-to-5 routine as the bagel he ate at lunch, or the way he arranged the papers on his desk. Nowadays, he barely even thought about it.

He hoped fanfiction never became so banal, though, and with Foggy there, he suspected it probably wouldn't. The man just had a way of making everything - even prompts that sounded worn-out and cliché - into something that Matt didn't mind reading. He wrote _very_ well. He probably didn't need a beta, and Matt tried not to think about what it might mean, that he kept Matt around in that capacity.

At some point, though, Matt noticed that a lot of Foggy's fics followed a similar formula. Quirky everyman meets Daredevil, they get on like a house on fire, romance ensues. Some fics had angst as a sort of intermediary step, one or two had comedic misunderstandings and one memorable challenge fic featured two penguins, a strip club and a language barrier, at which point Matt learnt that Foggy was fluent in Punjabi, of all things, which he'd only taken at college to impress a girl. 

But the basic formula was essentially the same, and, Matt had to admit, a bit self-inserty. That was another thing Matt tried not to think to hard about, but once he'd seen it, he couldn't unsee it. Foggy was simply present in all of his fic. Sometimes the resemblance was distorted, like looking through a cracked mirror, or a prism, but it was definitely there.

They saw more and more of each other, and soon it became impossible for Foggy not to have noticed the endless series of bruises, cuts and sprains that his beta seemed to be suffering from.

"Matt, I swear you get clumsier every time I see you! Was it the stairs again? Cause one lawyer to another, I think they're not up to code. You could at least have a word with your landlord."

Matt hated lying about it. He was sure that Foggy could see right through him, but didn't know what other conclusions the man might be drawing. Did he suspect an abusive relationship? Or some kind of freaky fight club? Or did he assume Matt was just more inept than he let on?

Either way, he didn't see that he had much of a choice, so the excuses kept coming.

"Tripped over a cat."

"More of a step off the curb than I realised."

"Damn escalators, I hate those things."

He was always surprised by how much of a big deal Foggy made of it, especially when it was just a small cut. He noticed when Matt was stiff from overexerting himself too. 

One time, Matt had no excuse for a cut that went right across the bridge of his nose. He'd gone with a shaving accident as his cover story, and was aware even as he said it how unlikely it was that _anybody_, even a blind man, would ever cut their nose while shaving. _Pathetic_.

Foggy made incredulous noises, and, searching for a distraction, Matt said it.

"Talking of cuts, I was just thinking about a shippy hurt/comfort kind of scenario, where Daredevil gets cut up, and has to get stitched back together by a cute OC nurse. I swear I found one like that a while ago, but I can't remember the name? But anyway, I figured it might be a good idea for my first attempt at writing something."

It was lame, as prompts go, and had been done a million times, but it did the trick, and soon Matt and Foggy were elaborating on it, improving it and thinking of plot twists.

Before long Matt was invested in his tough-as-nails OC, and had forgotten that the fic had started life as a half-assed distraction.

From there, it was only a short jump to writing it, and, much to his genuine surprise, Matt stepped up the the plate and wrote something that even he had to admit was pretty great.

Now he would be coming up with headcanons on his break at work, fleshing his nurse OC out into a slightly goofy but good-natured ally, who, Matt told himself, did not bear the slightest resemblance to a certain beta reader.

Stalking across the rooftops of Hell's Kitchen, he'd be holding imaginary conversations with another version of himself. Crashing after a heavier night, he'd try and bash out a few sentences that he'd thought up while he was out, before sleep took them from him for good.

His fic wasn't perfect, but it was steadily improving, as Matt got a sense of how to write things, and how his fictional Daredevil's voice worked. He took inspiration from things he'd read on Devil Watch, carefully avoiding anything too accurate, lest it arouse suspicion.

Gradually, Matt's fictional version of Daredevil started to become more of a real character in his head, divorced from the reality of Matt's true identity. The pen-and-paper Daredevil took on a life of his own, saying and doing things that the flesh-and-blood Daredevil never would.

Matt briefly wondered if he'd accidentally discovered a particularly rare, metafictional form of schizophrenia.

Still, it was worth it to hear Foggy's reaction, scanning over the page like a kid at Christmas, his heartbeat speeding up slightly, the ghost of a chuckle on his lips. 

_What I wouldn't give to kiss those lips..._

The thought stopped Matt dead.

He tried in vain to take it back mentally, pushing it into the recesses of his brain generally reserved for second cousins' birthdays and high school trigonometry and other easily forgettable things. 

But it was like an itch: once you've thought about it, it's there.

He had feelings - romantic feelings - about Foggy. 

Reeling from this revelation, he entirely missed what Foggy said.

"Sorry? I didn't catch that."

"I said, it's really good! I love the bit with the mistaken identity, although I do think Daredevil is OOC in a few places."

Matt registered the criticism on one level - how the hell was it even possible that his version of Daredevil was OOC? - but most of his brain still wasn't functioning properly. 

Matt Murdock, aka Frederick Wilmington the Third, aka Daredevil, aka the _world's biggest idiot_, had feelings for Foggy Nelson. 

_Dammit_.


	7. Chapter 7

Over the next few weeks, Matt tried his best to process things, and decided that, all things being equal, he probably wasn't in love with Foggy.

He'd thought so at first, after the initial shock had worn off, and had thrown himself back into the familiar rhythm of work and patrols. Maybe if he just avoided Foggy for a few days, he could work out where to go from here...

"I'm really quite sick," he apologised down the phone to Foggy, adding a touch of hoarseness to his voice.

"I can come round," Foggy replied. "My nana taught me a soup recipe that genuinely cures all ills." And if that wasn't adorable, Matt didn't know what was. Also an amazing sickfic premise. Gah, Foggy was making this hard.

"It's probably better you don't come visit, I'll just infect you."

"Well, I could drop off soup and leave you be?" The concern in Foggy's voice was almost palpable and Matt hated how much he liked hearing it.

"No, I insist. No point risking it. I think I'm gonna sleep, anyway."

"Okay, whatever you say."

This bought Matt a few days of thinking time.

He was in love with Foggy. 

But the more he thought it, the weirder it sounded. It started to sound hollow. Try as he might, he couldn't imagine himself saying the words "I love you" to Foggy's face. Thinking back to the sudden urge to kiss Foggy, he couldn't deny that it had been real, but he wasn't entirely certain that it still held true.

Okay, so maybe he was lusting after Foggy?

Again, it didn't seem to fit. There'd been desire there at the time, for sure, but now the idea of having sex with Foggy - or any level of physical intimacy, to be honest - seemed to cause Matt's brain to shut down.

After a while, he decided that it had probably had something to do with his fic. The nurse was a lot like Foggy, after all, and his fictional version of Daredevil clearly still hit a little bit too close to home. That was all. He'd got too far into shipping, and had accidentally started shipping himself.

_Huh_. He truly never ceased to find new and exciting ways to screw with his own mind.

He added that to the ever-growing pile of things not to think too hard about.

It was shipping, pure and simple. No need to panic. 

The more he repeated it, the more he almost believed it.

Crisis averted, Matt recovered from his cold and soon fell back into a routine.

Work, Foggy, Daredevil, sleep, repeat.

He decided to take a break from writing, but continue posting the fic he'd already written. It went down well, after some betaing from Foggy. It was stupid, but the first positive comment he got made him break out into a goofy smile that hung around for days. 

Marci noticed, because Marci always noticed.

"What's got into you, Murdock? Last time I looked that happy, there was a three-way and whole lot of vodka involved. Although if that's the reason you're looking so happy, then I don't actually wanna know, because _ugh_."

Matt shrugged.

"Dunno, must be something in the air."

"Well, dont tell me then, whatever floats your boat. Just keep it under wraps in the office, you're giving me the creeps."

Matt laughed and tried to school his face. Back to work. Disappointingly, the first client of the day was yet another Johnson, but this time the _sister_, who turned up to her briefing drunk out of her mind and, Matt suspected, high. Variety truly was the spice of life.

Days became weeks, and weeks became months, and before Matt knew it, he was hearing the muffled patter of snowfall on his apartment roof. It messed with his senses a little, giving him a lot of feedback, like rain did, but simultaneously making everything a little more rounded and fuzzy. 

Still, with the familiar fake-cinnamon scent of the holiday season came Yultide fic challenges, and fluff prompts about Daredevil trying to find the perfect ugly sweater and a whole series from the cat costume lady about how to make superhero-themed baubles. 

Matt started writing again, beginning with G-rated gen AUs and gradually incorporating more romance and real-life details, once he was sure that the strange feelings he'd felt wouldn't rear their heads again.

And they didn't, most of the time. Sure, there was the odd moment when Matt found himself wanting to stroke Foggy's hair to get a better idea of how long it really was. Sometimes, on the rare occasion when Matt had to pretend to need Foggy's help with crossing the road, or dodging passing bicycles, he held on Foggy's hand slightly longer than was strictly necessary. One time, once Foggy had tidied up enough to feel comfortable inviting Matt round to his place, Matt deliberately sucked in a huge breath when Foggy was out of the room, trying to surreptitiously create a mental reference for Foggy's now-familiar smell, a unique blend of musty legal books, guilty-secret Danish pastries and whatever inoffensively-scented shampoo currently graced his shower rack.

But now Matt knew that it was linked to his writing, he could keep it under wraps, or at least that's what he told himself. 

Together they worked on a series of otherwise unrelated one-shots, with the common conceit that they would be told through the eyes of bystanders and public service workers. Through the eyes of harried police officers, unfortunate construction workers and late-night revellers, drinking to celebrate, or to forget, or to simply get by, they sketched out a portrait of Hell's Kitchen and it's people.

It was an idea they'd got watching YouTube clips from a convention over in San Francisco, SuperCon, where the real-life superhero fandom - and confuse them to your peril with the fans of fictional superheroes, or, confusingly, fictional versions of real superheroes - were having a meet-up. It was the first time that Daredevil and his small but devoted legion of Imps had featured, and they even had a panel of their own. 

The woman talking had been saved by Daredevil almost a year ago, and as she told her story, Matt just about remembered her. She'd been jumped as she was coming home from work, only for Daredevil to save her. Far from this being the focus of what she was saying, though, this was only the beginning.

The next day she had reported it to the police, only to be told that there was very little they could do. _Daredevil had intervened and saved her, anyway, what more did she want from them? _

Going home, she'd asked around and found a bunch of friends and family who'd felt the same way. 

_Daredevil stopped them beating me up, but the police didn't seem to care about my statement after I explained that I hadn't seen Daredevil's face. _

_Daredevil got me my purse back, but the police wouldn't believe me when I said that my phone was still missing, and suggested that I was committing insurance fraud._

_Daredevil came in and scared the bejeezus out of him, but when the police turned up and found out Daredevil had done their job for them, they let him off with a warning and told him to clear off. The next day he keyed my car and hung around outside my workplace._

She'd found that things like this affected the women in her life disproportionately, especially the women of color, and had decided to do something about it, founding the Hell's Kitchen Legion, a non-profit organisation that showcased the stories of various Hell's Kitchen residents, lobbied public officials for change and offered pro bono legal advocacy for citizens who were the victims of police indifference. 

The Legion was, at least on a superficial level, unconnected to fandom, but most of the organizers were involved, they had a heavy Tumblr presence and their Twitter would retweet fannish memes as often as it would local news articles and thoughtpieces. Their Facebook group became a space for residents of Hell's Kitchen to offer their services, ask for help or simply vent their frustrations, and more often than not, it was a fandom voice that replied, setting up a Kickstarter to pay somebody's medical bills, offering to help repaint a vandalised shop, appealing for information on a stolen bike. Their activities were many and various, and Matt was actually proud of his fandom, for the first time since discovering it.

Most important for Matt and Foggy, however, was the fic challenge that the Legion had announced on their Tumblr, asking fans to write stories, make videos and generally create stuff that put the people of Hell's Kitchen first and foremost, raising awareness in the larger superhero fandom of some of the real issues lurking behind the dramatic news stories. 

That was why Matt and Foggy were working together on this project, which aimed to show Daredevil more indirectly, instead showing off the variety and tenacity of the people who encountered him daily.

Not indirectly enough, apparently, Matt realized, as Foggy turned to him one day.

"You realize, you're writing Daredevil as a blind guy in this fic, right? I mean, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I just wondered if you were aware of it..."

Matt was not, in fact, aware of it.

"How so?"

"Well, you keep describing him listening out for things, and reacting to various sounds, which, to be fair, a sighted Daredevil might do too. But the way you described the scene, with the floodlights? There's no way he wouldn't have seen what was going on long before your point of view character did. Plus you've written him avoiding open spaces, sticking to the edges of rooms. Which you definitely do."

Matt wondered when Foggy had picked up on that.

"I didn't realize. You think I should change it?"

"No, no, not at all" Foggy hastened to reply. "It's subtle, and I probably only noticed it cause I hang round with you a lot. Most readers won't notice, and even if they did, why the hell shouldn't Daredevil be a blind guy? It's fanfiction! Isn't that, like, the point? I've read female!Daredevil fics and trans!Daredevil fics and I've definitely seen some really good fanart out there for a racebent Daredevil. Why the hell shouldn't Daredevil be blind?"

There were so many things Matt could say in response to that - _should_ say in response to that, if he had any desire to keep his secret identity secret. _No, Daredevil can't be blind. It's unrealistic, look at him, he can't do any of that, maybe I should write those bits out. _

He couldn't bring himself to do it. Partly because he was hearing echoes of everybody who'd ever talked about him behind his back, assuming he couldn't hear them assess what he could and couldn't do. But also partly because he didn't want to spoil the moment. Foggy believed that Daredevil could be blind! The idea didn't freak him out! Matt didn't know quite why this felt like a personal victory. 

"Fair enough, I'll leave him be. It's not like he's the focus of this fic anyway," Matt said. "Guess I just like to see myself reflected in my fanfic."

God, that was a joke that worked on a few levels.

The series continued after that, of course, with Foggy's contributions to the series keeping up the conceit and incorporating a bunch of little things that Matt didn't even realise he did. It was a personal in-joke, something that only Matt and Foggy could really appreciate. In this series of one-shots, which didn't even focus primarily on Daredevil, the vigilante of Hell's Kitchen was blind, and nobody suspected a thing. 

He probably should have been more wary. Their shared fictional version of Daredevil was getting more and more like him, and it might just jog somebody's memory. On the other hand, it _was_ genuinely useful when Foggy picked up on unconscious quirks of his that betrayed the fact that he was blind. He could make more of an effort to avoid doing them, if they were avoidable, and so protect his identity better.

He told himself that that was why he carried on, and not purely for the fact that Foggy was now writing blind!Daredevil, consciously and openly basing him off Matt. 

It smacked of desperation, and Matt had never been further in denial.


	8. Chapter 8

Matt had been lucky so far. For the entirety of his fandom life - and it was getting on for 7 or 8 months now, he suddenly realized - he hadn't had much nocturnal drama to deal with.

He'd been out on patrol every night, of course, and there's been the usual amount trouble. But nothing like that business with Fisk a few years back.

But then the city did as the city periodically does, with a wave of gang violence erupting just before Valentine's Day. It had started with scattered reports of missing people and had escalated into a full-on crime wave, complete with panicking news outlets and twitchy police officers on the street.

Matt got sucked into it, of course, and it began to take up most of his time. Meeting up with Foggy became harder, so it was with a heavy heart that he invented some sick colleagues, claiming that he had to work overtime to fill in for them for the next few weeks.

When he did see Foggy, they didn't write as much as before. The mood was different, more nervous. They discussed whatever was on the news, speculating about Daredevil sightings, which were becoming ever more frequent.

Devil Watch, at least, was doing well from the sudden crime wave, although the author seemed as panicked as anybody else. Soon the author had a link up for a Google form where residents of Hell's Kitchen could anonymously leave tip-offs about the vigilante. It could be as simple as a location where he'd been seen, or even just a confirmation that he was okay, that he looked injured but was still on his feet, that he was limping a little, but had fought off his attackers. 

People clung onto those reports, and as he found Foggy poring over them, with an intensity that Matt didn't really understand, it struck Matt for the first time that these people genuinely had no idea how he was doing at any given time. He had the advantage of knowing exactly how Daredevil's latest exploits had turned out. But to the people of Hell's Kitchen, who didn't have that luxury, every fight could be his last. They didn't know if he had gotten out alive of any given dust-up. Any number of people didn't.

No wonder Foggy was tense.

The worst came a week or so later, after a particularly close call. Matt had traced the source of the violence to a local gang leader, trying to fill the vacuum that Fisk had left, and had been caught sneaking into the warehouse that served as their base. The ensuing fight had been bloody and public, and had ended in an explosion that had thrown Matt into the river. He'd washed up a way further downstream, bruised and bleeding.

He'd taken a few minutes to catch his breath, a few more to get his bearings and a few more again to work up the energy to stand up and drag himself home.

When he got back, he collapsed onto his bed and promptly slept through all of the alarms that should have woken him up the next morning.

He technically wasn't lying, he thought, as he phoned into work to inform them that he wasn't well. He was pretty sure he was minorly concussed, and everything hurt. Having done that, he sat back on his couch and flipped open his laptop.

He realised something was up when he saw that he had no less than 23 messages from Foggy. Checking his phone, be also had 7 texts and 3 missed calls. 

Worried, he checked the news.

"Explosion at Dockyard, Local Vigilante Feared Dead"

_Shit_.

There was a video too, apparently, and although Matt couldn't see it, the description told him that it showed the explosion throwing him into the water, without any sign of him resurfacing.

He briefly checked some other sites.

The Legion had posted an emergency call for information. Devil Watch was giving live updates on the fallout of the fight, as well as potential Daredevil sightings. Twitter was going nuts.

And in among it all, MistyAvocado.

"Like most of you, I'm in shock right now. But even if he's dead, we can't let this break us. We have to stick together, ride out this storm. I don't know what's happening in Hell's Kitchen and I'm scared, but I don't want this to be the end."

Suddenly Matt didn't want to be doing this. Didn't want to be sitting reading people's grief and pain and fear. It felt ghoulish and unfair, especially when he had the power to make it right.

He phoned Foggy.

"Hey, it's me."

"Where the hell were you, man? I've been calling all morning."

"I didn't see the news until just now, I went to bed early. I'm sorry."

"Look, I just... I freaked out, okay. I didn't... I don't... Matt, what if he's dead?"

Matt didn't know what to say.

"What if he's dead, and we all just sat by and cheered him on and watched it happen? Who the fuck _does_ that?"

"Foggy, there's nothing-"

"I know. There's nothing we could have done. I just... I just suppose it makes me angry, you know? Like, he's the only guy who does _anything_ about it all. And now, what? We're supposed to accept that he's dead? That's it, game over? Or do we start cheering on another hero, a new hero? Wait for them to die? Maybe take bets on how long it's gonna take this time? I can't do it, Matt. I _can't_."

Foggy's voice was strained, verging on tearful. Matt still didn't know what to say.

"Look, Foggy," he tried, "I can't tell you it'll all be fine, but I think we should wait, you know? I haven't seen the footage, but it sounds like nothing has been confirmed."

It was weak, and the snort on the other end of the phone suggested that Foggy wasn't buying it either.

"It doesn't matter. It'll happen sooner or later, he'll die, and we won't even know. He could be dead in a gutter and we wouldn't even _fucking_ know."

Matt didn't have an answer for that, so he kept quiet. He could practically hear Foggy shaking his head in disgust.

"Look, I can't... I'll see you tomorrow. Hopefully something'll have surfaced. I'm sorry."

And with that, Foggy hung up.

Matt knew what to do. That evening he went on patrol early, while the sun was still setting. Dark enough not to give anything away, but light enough that people could distinguish the red of his costume, if they looked hard enough. He picked his spot carefully, taking time to find a rooftop that would be visible from street level, and, upon hearing a group of passers-by, gently knocked a few pieces of gravel down from the roof into the alleyway below. It made enough noise to attract their attention, and Matt stood there for a while, waiting to hear the slight gasp of recognition. Once he'd heard it, it was time to move on.

He repeated this a few times before starting on his rounds proper, making sure that just enough people had caught a glimpse of him.

The next day, he had a message from Foggy.

"He's alive, crisis averted!"

And then another.

"I'm sorry about yesterday, I guess I was just jumpy... Wanna go get pizza tonight?"

Matt smiled. _Mission accomplished._


	9. Chapter 9

From that point on, Matt was careful to let people catch a glimpse of him at least once or twice a week. It felt counterintuitive after maintaining his secrecy for so long, but it soon became habit.

One upshot of this, besides not having to deal with a panicking Foggy again, was that Tumblr had a lot more to work with. Devil Watch was getting photos and tips with unprecedented regularity, and soon most of the residents of Hell's Kitchen had seen him at some point, or knew somebody who had.

Of course, that also led to more stories in mainstream news outlets, mostly heavily critical of Daredevil's brand of vigilante justice. There were plenty of arguments you could make to that effect, Matt conceded, but the problem was that most of the news reports ignored them in favour of criticizing everything from his lack of respect for the police, to the fact that the people he defended and the values he represented were somehow "un-American". 

Public opinion was split, as ever, but to read the major news outlets, you'd think Daredevil was universally despised.

Then somebody in the media discovered the Imps, and the shit hit the fan. 

"Fans of Violent "Hero" Band Together, Write Obscene Pornography"

"What's the Hell's Wrong With Hell's Kitchen?"

"Sick, Twisted and Criminal: Why Daredevil's Defenders Are Missing the Big Picture"

Matt mostly ignored it, but he could tell it bugged Foggy. It was a shame, Foggy mused, that there was nobody keeping a more comprehensive record, logging and documenting all the things Daredevil had been up to on any given evening, and everything happening in the community because of him and his fans. Some kind of centralized reference point, which people could add their own experiences and stories to. The goal would be less to unmask Daredevil, or track him down, and more to keep track of the good that he'd accomplished in Hell's Kitchen, to provide ammunition against the mainstream media's narrative, and to show all the ways in which Daredevil's fandom were changing Hell's Kitchen for the better.

There was Devil Watch, of course, but that tended to deal in breaking news and anecdotal stories. This would stretch back further, all the way back to the start of Daredevil's career as a vigilante, and it would all be meticulously sourced and researched.

It sounded a lot like investigative journalism to Matt, and he said as much to Foggy.

"Well yeah, that's kind of what I was going for," he said. "It'd be something, at least. I just feel like I ought to do _something_."

Matt wondered how Foggy was going to accomplish this. As far as he knew, the man had no background in journalism, although he was getting used to Foggy surprising him with this kind of thing.

"No, no, I have no idea what I'm doing. But... I got in touch with OffThePage."

"Wait, you've met OffThePage and you didn't tell me?"

"Well, it was kind of an accident. I didn't know it was her. I was just working on a case and we ended up interviewing this journalist - Karen, her name was - and she had a Daredevil pin on her bag. So I asked if she was a fan, and we ended up talking about that and it turns out she's OffThePage!"

"No way! You just met her like that?"

"Yeah, anyway, she's a journalist at the New York Bulletin, and we were chatting about it, when she mentioned that most of her colleagues don't know she's a fan. And, like, that would be her career over, if they knew. You know the Bulletin's stance on vigilantes."

"Okay," said Matt, sensing where this might be going.

"So yeah, one thing led to another and we had the idea to start this blog project, on the condition of her staying anonymous. And I was wondering if you'd be on board?"

Matt agreed, because he kind of had to agree, didn't he? It wasn't every day that you got to work with OffThePage, and besides, he could see that the project was important to Foggy.

And so it was that the Infernal Logbook, or IL for short, was born. 

The name had been a joke, at first, a codename of sorts, before they could come up with something more serious. Then, when the time had come to first publish, they couldn't think of anything better, so the Infernal Logbook stuck.

It functioned as a sort of database, letting users search by date or by location, with sections carefully and neutrally documenting Daredevil's actions, sections focussing on fans' stories and sections that were almost like a continuation of MistyAvocado's legal meta, giving a balanced version of the case for and against Daredevil. There was space for statistics and data on crime rates, and conviction rates and clean-up costs, but also space for personal testimonies and interviews with a wide range of sources.

Simply put, it was unique, and Matt was quite impressed when it first went live.

In creating the IL, he'd gotten to know OffThePage - or Karen, as he supposed he should think of her - and soon she was a regular third member of Matt and Foggy's coffee-shop meet-ups. They had a group chat, which Karen speedily nicknamed The Keyboard Crusaders - a superhero team name, she explained - and soon they had a non-negligeable online following.

It wasn't just the IL either. Soon they were running a side blog, mostly for fun, where they reblogged various memes and meta, as well as giving some insight into the production process behind the IL, which mostly was quite boring and involved tracking people down and interviewing them a lot, then requesting police reports to corroborate their statements. 

Karen seemed to excel at it, and under her tutelage, Foggy soon became a pretty credible investigative journalist. Matt felt a pang of jealousy when he found them working together on a new entry into the IL, getting excited about CCTV footage, or some old Tweet from two years ago, or whatever their newest lead was.

It was ridiculous, he told himself, not to mention immature. Yes, Matt had been Foggy's friend first. And yes, Foggy was now spending a lot of time with Karen. But really, Foggy had the right to be friends with whoever he wanted to, and Matt should support that. Matt knew that, and one one level he was genuinely happy that Foggy had found somebody he got on with so well. Matt had made a new friend out of it too, he reminded himself, and anyway, it's not like Foggy was spending any less time with Matt than he had in the past.

He had absolutely no reason to be jealous of Karen Page.

In an attempt to convince himself, he made an effort to spend more time with Karen, inviting her round for dinner when Foggy was busy, in the hope that getting to know her better would stop him resenting her.

Over the course of the evening he learnt many things about Karen, not least that she was awesome. He felt slightly ashamed that he hadn't taken the time to talk to her more already, because it turned out that they had a lot of interests in common. She'd actually grown up in the same area of New York that Matt had, and they spent quite a while reminiscing about how nice the park there was, and where you could buy the best ice cream. 

They talked a lot about food, actually - her because she'd spent a brief stint working in a very fancy restaurant, him because heightened senses tend to make you into a bit of a food snob. It was something he didn't often get to vent about with Foggy, who basically survived on a diet of instant ramen and leftovers from his copious family's regular gatherings, and whose idea of fine dining involved adding some cheese to his microwave pasta.

He was already a huge fan of her fic, of course, and it hardly surprised him to learn that she wrote for a living, but he also learnt that she was working on a novel in her spare time. She was cagy about telling him what it was about, but he already knew that whatever it was, he'd happily read it.

Matt had a great time, and was quite disappointed at the end of the evening, when he realised that the thought of Karen and Foggy spending time together still annoyed him.

He supposed it would fade over time, and chided himself for being so immature about it all, then offered to walk over to the coffee shop with Karen the next day, since they were both coming from the same direction.

For a second he thought he heard his own jealousy echoing in Foggy's voice. He frowned and tried to listen more closely. But then it was gone, and Karen was convincing them to try chai lattes and all was right with the world again.


	10. Chapter 10

Matt didn't know when the Keyboard Crusaders had become A Big Deal within their little corner of the internet. 

It had simply happened while he wasn't looking, like the seasons changing, or night falling. One minute they were a small, obscure blogging project, and the next they had thousands of followers and people would ask them for their opinions on all sorts of vigilante things, as if they had any sort of authority in the matter. 

Well, Matt supposed he _did_ have some authority in the matter. Not that he could tell anybody that, but still...

The catalyst for this sudden popularity had been a few months after beginning the IL, when Karen had spotted something in her research.

"Hey, have you seen this, guys?"

She was pointing to something on her laptop screen, and Foggy bunched over it, trying to see what she was looking at.

"Huh," he replied and now Matt was itching to know what it was.

"Care to elucidate?" 

"It's a map I've been making," explained Karen. "I've been trying to figure out where Daredevil's limits are. Like, we know he tends to stay in Hell's Kitchen, but he's popped up in other places in the past, and I was wondering whether we should be factoring other police station's crime data into our statistics, just to be a bit more balanced."

Okay. So far, so normal. He was slightly unnerved by Karen's devotion to the statistics, but that wasn't exactly news.

"And?"

"And I noticed that Daredevil mostly avoids a patch of Hell's Kitchen around 55th and 9th."

It was the area where Matt lived. He hoped that Foggy wouldn't pick up on the connection.

"Hey, isn't that your neighborhood?"

No such luck. 

"Yeah, and?"

"Well, can you think of any reason Daredevil would avoid it?"

_No_, he thought, _because Daredevil doesn't avoid it. It's just that he lives there, so he's _super_ careful never to be seen in the area._

"Not a clue," Matt lied through his teeth. "I suppose it's just not that rowdy?" he suggested, aware as he said it that it wasn't true; Matt's neighbourhood was as rowdy as any in Manhattan.

Foggy wasn't buying it either. "Weren't you complaining just the other day about the bar next door, and how it's clientele are all noisy assholes?"

_Damn_. He _had_ been complaining, because nobody wants to deal with maudlin drunks at 5am, especially nobody with Matt's sense of hearing. 

He shrugged noncommitally, hoping that Foggy would drop it.

"Well, it's weird," Foggy murmured, and left it at that.

Karen, however, was unstoppable, and posted it on their side blog, along with a screen shot of the map.

"Was looking at a map for statistics reasons (thrilling, I know) and noticed that our favourite vigilante missed a spot- anybody have any idea why?"

Suggestions came flooding in, from the boringly credible - "maybe people living there just aren't reporting sightings" - to the slightly more imaginitive - "maybe its because the buildings are slightly taller, and he can't be bothered climbing them" - to the frankly ridiculous - "maybe he's afraid of trees; there's a lot around there". 

Slightly offended that people thought he was a tree-phobic layabout who could beat up thugs all night but couldn't be bothered climbing a moderately tall building, Matt made sure to show himself that same night, standing atop the tallest building on the street, before performing an acrobatic leap down via a nearby tree's topmost boughs. 

_That'll show them._

Karen posted the picture somebody took the next morning with the caption "Well it looks like we were wrong... oops?"

If that had been that, Matt would have been perfectly happy, but he should have known that Karen's eye for patterns and correlations wouldn't let her give up that easily.

First she noticed that Daredevil tended to hit certain streets at the same time each night.

Matt made sure to vary his route.

Then she noticed that Daredevil would generally stay out much longer on rainy nights, leading to a spate of arrests after 4 or 5am. 

Matt stayed out late on a perfectly clear night, then, for good measure, decided to head home early during a storm, instead of staying out to enjoy the limited vision that the rain gave him.

Karen noticed that Daredevil tended to call it quits ever so slightly earlier on Saturday nights.

Matt pulled an all-nighter, and rocked up to Mass without any sleep whatsoever, instead of the usual few hours he tried to snatch.

The more Karen dug, the more frustrated she got, until one day she wrote the post that sealed the trio's fate.

"Guys, I think Daredevil's reading this blog?? Every time we're onto something, he stops doing it? Daredevil, if you're reading this, hmu for some statistical analysis!"

Matt had smiled - _Daredevil? Reading this blog? It's more likely than you think! -_ then carried on with his day as normal, only to get a message from Foggy later on, clearly amused by something.

"Matt have you checked the IL today???"

"No?" he sent back, wondering for a second what Foggy might be on about.

"Lol you really should"

Matt checked, then shook his head and checked again.

Karen's post had taken on a life of its own, getting thousands upon thousands of notes, and prompting hundreds of readers to flood their ask box with questions about how they'd done it, what Daredevil was really like and whether he was actually on Tumblr. 

Everybody seemed _genuinely_ convinced that Daredevil read their blog. Matt didn't know whether that was more hilarious for its sheer misguided lunacy or for the fact that, technically speaking, it was an entirely accurate assumption.

Either way, it translated into a lot of new followers, and the IL had already started being tagged in a bunch of otherwise unrelated posts. 

He shot off a message to Foggy and Karen.

"Congrats guys, we broke the internet."

"You're telling me?" Foggy replied.

"Does this mean we're BNFs now?" Karen joked.

There was a pause as the three of them simultaneously realized that this might actually be the case.

Foggy summed up what they were all thinking.

"Shit, I think it does."


	11. Chapter 11

Their newfound status as BNFs did have it's advantages, Matt began to learn. 

For one, a whole bunch of people started coming to them to report things, which made compiling the IL a whole lot easier. They were invited to come and talk on a round table at next year's SuperCon, which Matt agreed to without really thinking and was now trying to think up excuses for, and were even cited by a few journalists, who used their statistics as a source for online news articles that were, Matt was pleased to see, a lot more balanced than what they'd been seeing before. 

All of this, taken in aggregate, gave their blog a certain veneer of credibility. It was just that - a veneer - and most of their followers also followed their side blog, and so knew that behind the IL lay a team of three snarky, overworked Imps, just like them. But to the outside world, the Infernal Logbook seemed like quite a professional outfit.

The police were suddenly more willing to share information and statistics with them. They formed partnerships and working relationships with local journalists, a select few of whom even got to know who Karen really was. At one point Stark Industries sent a representative to sound them out, tentatively asking questions about their sources, before offering them a considerable sum of money to divulge any more personal information they had on the vigilante known as Daredevil.

Karen had literally laughed in his face at that, while Foggy, ever the diplomat, sat him down, offered him a Danish pastry and politely explained that no, we don't have any of this information that you seem to think we do, and even if we did, we wouldn't be interested in selling it, so would you kindly piss off and leave us to write our improbably popular blog.

Matt had remained silent through all of this, wondering at what point, and in what capacity, he'd popped up on Stark Industries' radar - a company, he reminded himself, that otherwise was concerned with saving the world and defending against alien menaces. 

Still, all this had happened quite gradually, and Matt mostly didn't notice how things were escalating. It was just the new normal. A couple of months ago you got your first positive comment on a piece of fanfiction, and now the largest company on the planet is offering you several million dollars to snitch on yourself. No biggie.

That all changed with the Trish Talk interview. 

It started quite innocently.

"So I have this friend," Karen had said, "And she knows somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody, and long story short, Trish Walker - you know, off the radio - is doing a slot on superheroes and secret identities next week, because of the buzz around the Sokovia Accords, right, and she'd like to interview us, maybe field some listeners' questions."

Matt must have made a face at that, because the next thing he knew, Karen was backtracking.

"I know it's not really what we set out to do, and its not really our job to give personal opinions on the Accords, or anything, and by all means, if you don't think it's a good idea, I can nix it. I just thought it might be fun, you know?"

There were so many reasons why Karen should nix it. Trish Talk was public radio, for one, and broadcast to the whole city, which was a lot of superhero-related coverage for Matt Murdock, blind attorney who absolutely did _not_ want to be associated with superheroes in the public eye. Wilson Fisk could be listening. Heck, any number of minor thugs could be listening and recognise his voice.

It wasn't even a topic Matt had many opinions on, either, to be honest. The Accords were the latest hot political topic, but their scope was largely limited to superpowered individuals already working for or with government agencies. In his capacity both as a Daredevil fan and as a criminal defence lawyer, that wasn't really his wheelhouse. 

There was also the feeling, of course, that a radio interview on secret identities was perhaps skirting too close to the cliff edge, and that Matt might go too far, or worse, that he might give in to the familiar, illogical urge to jump straight off the cliff and admit everything. Live radio would be an overly dramatic way of doing it, but since when had a little drama ever stopped Matt doing anything? He was the guy who loomed over criminals wearing an honest-to-God devil costume, while lightning flashed in the background, then went home to obsess over the best way to phrase his own anguished and entirely fictional declaration of love to a thinly-veiled version of his best friend.

He was just trying to think up an excuse that he could give to Karen without sounding insane, when Foggy chipped in.

"Ooh, Trish Talk! I love that show! I listen to it when I can't sleep sometimes, which is probably a bad idea, cause then I get really invested in the stuff she's discussing and then I sleep even less, but on balance that's probably good, right?"

Matt heard the excitement in Foggy's voice and sighed. Guess he was going on the radio after all.

In the end, it was fine. Karen decided to keep her identity a secret, explaining to Trish how she would rather keep OffThePage, fanfic writer, and Karen Page, respectable journalist, separate. Oddly fitting for a discussion on secret identities and anonymity, Trish agreed, laughing. Matt, meanwhile, tried his best to disguise his voice by faking a raspy cold, and surprised himself by actually enjoying the discussion, which started by outlining some issues around the Accords but soon drifted into more familiar territory.

Some of that was to do with Trish herself, who turned out to be surprisingly sympathetic. She mostly agreed with what they were saying about vigilante justice, and even had some pretty interesting things to say about anonymity and superheroes' personal wellbeing.

"I think the one point where I can maybe see the government's side of things - and don't get me wrong, I'm mostly against it - is the idea that a registry of some kind would make it easier for heroes to tap into some kind of support network, you know?"

Matt wasn't quite sure what she meant, and asked.

"Well, I mean, Tony Stark, when a mission goes wrong or he gets injured or whatever, has all of SHIELD behind him - at least, he used to - and so he can get help."

Karen made a noise as if to agree.

"It means he has access to support. If he's hurt, there's somebody to fix him up, if his equipment or his suit is broken, he has the resources to mend it properly, if he's affected by what he does, there's probably a therapist out there who can support him that way. But this new wave of vigilante heroes..." 

Trish's voice was trembling as she trailed off.

"I worry sometimes, that's all."

Matt was going to intervene, but Foggy beat him to the punch.

"Yeah, I totally see that, and it's a concern I sometimes have too. But at the same time, Stark's arrangement with the government comes with a significant loss of autonomy, and is also contingent on him occupying a very public role that these heroes may not be comfortable with. I'd also say that the nature of the threats that they deal with is fundamentally different - Daredevil needs a certain level of anonymity to function as a street-level crimefighter."

That just about covers it, Matt thought approvingly. But Foggy continued.

"I like to think, though, that if he ever needed any of those things - you know, medical help, resources, somebody to talk to - he'd know that he can come to us. Not just, like, me and my friends here, but _us_, you know. The wider community. Because there are a lot of us who owe a lot to him, and most of us would be more than happy to lend a hand, or an ear, and wouldn't compromise his identity in doing so. We're there for him."

Matt's throat closed up, and he could feel his heart doing a strange stutter in his chest. Of course, he knew he'd never actually be able to go as Daredevil and talk things through with Foggy, for reasons that were staggeringly obvious, but it was good to hear, all the same.

Trish seemed to be struggling, and it was a few seconds before she composed herself, her heart beating slightly faster than usual. Matt frowned and made a note to look into her background, before she took over the discussion.

"I get that, and on a serious note, I think a few of the other vigilantes we've seen recently could probably also count on similar support from their friends out there. But for now, shall we hear some questions from our listeners?"

And on they went, answering questions on privacy laws, police clean-up rates, the advocacy work of the Hell's Kitchen Legion and, entertainingly enough, which hero they thought would win in a fight between Daredevil and all the Avengers.

"Honestly, like him or not, my money is always on the Hulk," claimed Karen judiciously. "I mean, come on, last time he was let loose, he took out whole blocks."

"Black Widow," said Matt. "I'd be scared of Black Widow. She's sneaky and highly-skilled, and her history as a SHIELD agent gives her considerable assets."

"Daredevil, no doubt," Foggy stated with all the misplaced confidence of a particularly opinionated 5 year-old and left it at that.

Matt couldn't help but grin.

Leaving the studio, the three of them smiled nervously at each other.

"That's it, we're officially radio stars!" giggled Karen, slightly giddy. "Not bad for a bunch of obsessive internet weirdos!"

Matt pulled a face at her and she giggled.

"Mind you, I'm not sure we didn't end up talking about the wrong hero - Matt's a closet Widower, clearly. A fan of her _considerable assets_, are you?"

Foggy cracked, and then Matt did and soon the three of them were walking home together in stitches.

Matt set off on patrol that night with a spring in his step. There was rain forecast, the radio thing had been more fun than he'd expected and - perhaps best of all - Foggy had his back.

Naturally, that was the evening that everything went to hell.


	12. Chapter 12

It started with the sounds of a scuffle somewhere in the vicinity of the docks. 

Matt strained to listen.

"Hey, let go!" 

This was followed by a thump and a sudden increase in the speaker's breathing.

Climbing the nearest fire escape, Matt began to get a better picture of what was happening.

Two people, or maybe three, men by the sound of it, were bothering another man, and had slammed him against a car door. It was a depressingly familiar scenario - most likely they were trying to mug the man. Nothing Matt couldn't handle.

Still, there was something setting off alarm bells in the back of Matt's brain.

As he got closer he could hear the attackers' voices.

"Dirty scum," one was saying. The man spat. "I'm there for him." At this the voice became high and mocking. "Not for long, you won't be, not if we have anything to say about it."

Matt's stomach sank as he reached them and the pieces started fitting together.

Sure enough, the victim's next words confirmed what Matt was afraid of.

"P-p-p-p-please, no!"

_Foggy_.

The voice was trembling and stuttering and contorted with fear, but underneath it all it was still the same voice that Matt heard almost every day, only this time it had tenor of panic that was just _wrong_.

Foggy whimpered, and Matt froze up.

It was as if all the blood in his body had rushed to his head and his heart was working wrong and he couldn't breathe and his legs were about to give out and he was going to be sick, because no, no, no, no, Foggy couldn't be involved in this, this wasn't right, this wasn't something that happened to him.

Then Matt heard the sound of a knife being drawn and all other thoughts were banished.

He sprang into action. The element of surprise was in his favour. Thug Number One went down quickly, Thug Number Two following in a matter of seconds.

Matt turned to take down Thug Number Three, only to find him holding the knife to Foggy's throat.

_Oh God._

"Gotcha," the man smirked. 

Foggy's heart was pounding and he was barely breathing.

"Thought we'd just teach this guy here a lesson. Carve him up nice and messy, remind him what happens if you offer Daredevil your help in this neighborhood."

Matt flinched at the thought. 

The man must have mistaken it for surprise.

"Oh yeah, this one's a fan of yours. Didn't you know? Went on the radio, offered his support, did a very good job of defending you. He's a lawyer. Good at arguing. Not much use against a knife, though, is it?"

Foggy stopped breathing entirely.

"Get away from him," Matt snarled.

"No, I don't think I will. You see, I was just gonna hurt him, but now he's all that's stopping you from killing me. So you'll forgive me if I don't take you up on that one."

Matt's brain was working quicker than ever before, but simultaneously didn't seem to be working at all. He calculated angles and distances, soaked in every sound, every smell, every disturbance in the air, looking for an opening.

He heard Foggy gulp and smelled the iron tang of blood as the knife dug into his throat.

"In fact, I'm gonna keep walking back this way - that's right, with the lawyer - and you're gonna back away slowly." The man began to inch away from Matt. "I'll do you a favor and leave his body somewhere you'll find it when I go after his friends."

_Cocky_, Matt thought. _Sloppy too_. The man was walking backwards towards his vehicle, which meant he couldn't see the grating that Matt knew was right behind him. The unexpected surface underfoot made him stumble, and as the man stumbled, Matt struck.

Making his move, Matt lunged for the knife, sending it clattering to the ground, and soon had the man pinned against the wall.

"Don't you _dare_ go after my people," he growled in the man's face. "Attack me, hurt me, threaten me. But you do _not_ go after my people." 

The man whined, terrified, as Matt increased the pressure on his windpipe.

"Do you understand?"

The man gasped in the affirmative. 

Matt increased the pressure again, just to toy with the man, and for one mad moment he played with the idea of throwing principles out of the window and killing him.

Then he heard Foggy collapse against the wall on the other side of the alley, panting heavily. _Prioritize, Murdock. Foggy first, asshole later._

"You can tell that to everybody else you associate with too," Matt said, digging his fingers in uncomfortably tight, before taking a deep breath to memorize the man's scent. "Now go, and don't let me see you again!"

With that he let the man go, turning back to his friend.

"Are you alright?" he asked, kicking himself. Of course Foggy wasn't alright. The man had been threatened at knifepoint and held hostage, and now was hyperventilating in an alleyway. 

Still, Foggy seemed to be trying to get himself together enough to answer.

"Hey, no, no, it's okay, you're in shock. Just focus on breathing, yeah? Yeah, that's it. Breathe."

Foggy took a slightly steadier breath in.

"Yeah, there we go. And out."

Foggy let it out. 

They carried on like this for a minute or two before Foggy seemed to have more of a handle on things.

"Y-y-you... You saved me," Foggy finally managed to get out, stuttering through chattering teeth.

"I could have gotten you killed," Matt shrugged.

"That g-g-guy would have killed me." Foggy only just seemed to have grasped the concept. "He wanted to kill me."

Matt tried to look reassuring. It didn't work. God, he was bad at this. This was why he didn't usually stick around after saving people.

"He wanted to-" Foggy froze abruptly.

Matt's mind raced. Was Foggy injured? Was he going to pass out? Was it another panic attack?

"Oh God, he wanted to go after my friends, you need to stop him-"

Matt cut Foggy off.

"I gave him a message. He won't be going after any of you anytime soon."

Matt really hoped that was true. If the man decided to go after Matt, that was not a problem, obviously, but he hoped Karen was safe. Her insistence on anonymity granted her a measure of protection, he supposed. 

Foggy tilted his head towards Matt, as if he had suddenly realized something.

"Thank you," he said, in a quiet voice. 

And now Matt didn't know what to say. 

"Come on, do you think you can stand up and walk?"

Foggy could, and took a few trembling steps towards the end of the alleyway.

"Right. Good. Let's get you home, then."

Matt helped Foggy back to his apartment. It was more concern than Daredevil ever usually showed for the people he'd rescued, and Matt would have been worried about Foggy connecting the dots, but something in the way Foggy walked, haltingly, as if he wasn't quite sure where they were going, told him he'd have no problems there.

In the end, it was all he could do to get Foggy into his apartment without waking the whole building.

"Thank you," Foggy repeated as Matt turned to leave, his voice less shaky than before, but somehow still just as small and lost. Something about hearing Foggy so rattled didn't sit right with Matt.

Behind the closed door, he heard Foggy's breathing catch, followed by the sound of him frantically locking his doors and windows before collapsing onto the couch. He doubted Foggy would be sleeping much tonight.

He doubted he would either, truth be told.

The rest of the night passed in a blur. Matt checked in on Karen, perching on her roof as he listened to the steady, comforting sound of her breathing. _Sound asleep_. He let out a breath that he didn't know he was holding.

Then he set about tracking the man who had threatened Foggy. That took a little longer, but by the time the sun was rising, the man was tied up unconscious outside the local police station, along with the knife he'd used on Foggy, 3 plastic bags of marijuana and one illegally modified firearm, all of which he'd been hoarding at the safehouse where Matt finally found him. Hopefully at least one of those would get him arrested. 

By that point, it was basically morning, and Matt didn't see the point of going to bed. Instead, he spent several hours outside Foggy's apartment block, guarding against any other potential threats. He liked to know that Foggy was just there, awake but safe. He listened to Foggy breathing. _More_ _than a little creepy_, the little voice chipped in. Matt was practiced at ignoring the little voice by now.

Just before dawn, Matt headed home and changed for work, tipping back a double espresso in the hope of making it through the day without nodding off. He'd called in sick far too much lately, and hanging around at home would just make him more tense anyway.

Still, however terrible he felt, when they met up that afternoon, Foggy sounded worse.

Matt had been surprised that Foggy had wanted to meet up at all, but the message had pinged in mid-afternoon. By the time 5 o'clock came round, Matt could hardly focus on the case in hand.

As he entered their usual coffee bar, Matt could already sense Foggy's tension. 

"Hey, you okay?" he asked, putting off on ordering a coffee to check on Foggy.

"Yeah. Well, no, but it's a long story."

Foggy's voice was firm, but there was a note of hysteria to it that Matt didn't trust.

"What's the matter?"

"I couldn't sleep again last night, so I went for a walk, right? Like I do sometimes. Only, there were these men... and they tried to threaten me because of what we said on Trish Talk. They... they had a knife, Matt. They..." Foggy trailed off.

There was a brief moment where Matt thought it would all come crashing down and Foggy would start crying right there in the café. 

Then the moment passed and he heard Foggy take a calming breath.

"But Daredevil turned up and saved me. Beat the guy up, helped me home, I think. God, Matt, I'd never actually seen the guy in person. He's even cooler in real life. Bet you're jealous, huh?"

Foggy's tone was light-hearted, but Matt wasn't convinced.

"Are you okay? Did they hurt you at all?"

"No, no," Foggy replied all too quickly. "I'm fine, it's fine. I was rattled, you know? But I'm fine."

_Liar_.

Still, Matt knew Foggy wouldn't budge on the matter. God knows why. Maybe he genuinely didn't want to talk about it. Or maybe he thought he should be strong for Matt's sake. Maybe he just didn't want to admit how scared he still was. 

Matt knew when to pick his fights.

"Okay, and you saw Daredevil? What was he like? Did he say anything to you?"

From there the conversation spiralled, and once Karen arrived and had been filled in, Matt surprised himself by actually having a good time. He thought that Foggy was slightly less jumpy by the end of the evening, which was good.

He also caught echoes of his own concern in Karen's voice, which made him happy. Good that Foggy has somebody else looking out for him. He knew that that would have made him jealous a month or two ago, but now it hardly seemed to matter.

As they were leaving, Foggy caught Matt by the sleeve.

"Hey, man, I'm glad you're okay. That you and Karen are both okay, I suppose."

Matt was caught off-balance, wondering how to respond to that. He opted for the truth.

"Yeah, I'm glad you're okay. You...You scared me for a bit there." 

Foggy seemed to crumple for a second.

"God, Matt, I was really fucking scared. I froze and the guy had a knife in my face, said all sorts of things... and then he said he was gonna get you guys and..."

Foggy's breath caught again and he trailed off.

"Hey, it's okay, we're okay," Matt said, hopefully soothingly. "We're both okay."

"You're okay," Foggy repeated.

"And so are you. Do you want me to walk back to your apartment with you?" Matt offered.

Foggy nodded, and the two of them walked off in the direction of Foggy's place. Wordlessly, Matt held out an arm, inviting Foggy to guide him across the main road.

If he clung onto Foggy's arm a bit tighter than usual, Foggy didn't complain. Matt wasn't sure which of them needed it most.


	13. Chapter 13

Life carried on and, Matt was pleased to note, they didn't get any more threats. Maybe the message had gotten through. He hoped so.

The three of them didn't give any more radio interviews, though. Something about your friend being held at knifepoint will do that to you.

Foggy was recovering well, although he still tensed up a little when people approached them on the street, Matt noticed. He was noticing a lot of things recently - even more so than usual - and all of them to do with Foggy. It was stupid and weird and more than a little stalkerish, but when they were together Matt found himself almost unconsciously tracking Foggy's breathing, sensing the slight jitter in his hands when he'd drunk too much coffee, checking up on whether he'd been eating well. Honestly, it was like he'd turned into Foggy's doting grandmother when he hadn't been looking, and he wasn't sure what to do with this realization. 

He'd made a conscious effort to stop when he first became aware that he was doing it, but after a while it just became something be did, like how he ordered his pens at work, or how he checked his Tumblr before going off on patrol. 

It was concern for a friend, he rationalized. He was checking that his friend was okay; that's what friends do. The only difference was that Matt, with his heightened senses, had more resources than most.

He pointedly ignored the little voice when it asked why he wasn't as attuned to Karen's wellbeing. 

Everything seemed to be coming up roses. The IL continued to flourish, Matt's own fic improved and he even began to branch out into a few other, non-superhero fandoms, at Foggy's urging.

He'd been just the wrong age to read Harry Potter, for example, since he'd still been mastering Braille when it became the phenomenon that it did. He'd missed the boat, and by the time he knew Braille well enough, or there were easily-obtained audiobooks of the series, it had somehow become a point of pride that he hadn't and wouldn't read them. 

Enough conversations with Foggy and Karen, however, in which Matt sat there bemused and uncomprehending while they discussed their house and patronus and general impression of somebody called Snape, and they finally wore Matt down. He picked up some audiobooks and got listening.

Sure enough, he was bitten by the bug, and one fandom led to another, until Matt had a collection of different series and ships on his dash. _About time, really_, he mused.

Life seemed to have stabilized into a happy routine, and then Karen had to go and spoil it all by bringing up the fanart.

He knew that Foggy produced fanart, of course. How could he not know? He remembered finding the picture of him, all those months ago, and he knew Foggy had done bits and pieces since then. It just wasn't something he was particularly interested in, seeing that he couldn't actually see the artwork in question. Foggy mentioned it casually from time to time, but it had never really been a talking point.

With Karen, though, it was another story.

"Foggy, you have been holding out!"

Foggy shot her a slightly alarmed glance.

"Uh...okay?"

"I was trying to find one of your really old posts. I knew I'd seen it reblogged somewhere, so I was looking through stuff you'd posted years ago, right?"

If it was possible, Foggy looked even more alarmed.

"Look, if this is about my old-school pre-Defrosting Captain America self-insert series, I know those are trash, okay. You don't need to remind me, and I'm sure Matt doesn't need to know about that either."

Matt chuckled and made a mental note to check that out at his next convenience.

Karen shook her head fondly.

"No, although that sounds amazingly trashy and I am there for it."

"Aww man," Foggy replied. "I was like 14 and didn't know how commas worked, don't do that to yourself!"

"Come on, if you didn't want us to read them, you shouldn't have brought them up!"

Foggy slumped slightly.

"But no," Karen replied, "I meant your fanart!"

Foggy straightened up again.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I knew you did fanart now, of course, but I hadn't looked back at your stuff from way back before I really knew you, right? And some of it is _really_ good. Like, you've got one where there's a sunset and you've just got silhouettes, you know the one?"

Foggy did, and they got chatting about various pieces he'd done. Turns out Karen had actually seen quite a bit of it circulating on her dash without realising that it was Foggy's.

After a while, though, Matt realized she was hanging back, not saying something. Foggy picked up on it too.

"Come on, I know you're dying to say something. You keep trying to say it and stopping. Tell me!"

"Well..." Karen hesitated. 

"Well?" Foggy prompted.

"Well, the thing is, I don't know if you know you're doing it, and I don't know what your reasoning behind it is, and it's probably just cause you spend a lot of time together, but... looking at your older stuff I realised that I wasn't always recognising Daredevil in it, cause you used to draw him differently, right? He'd have this, sort of, angular superhero chin, very Superman, very clean shaven, and he'd be properly jacked, you know?"

Foggy nodded, clearly not sure where this was going.

"And then a bit more than a year ago, your Daredevil changed, got a bit slimmer, a bit taller, gained some stubble. And.. well, you're... uh, you're definitely, recognisably drawing Matt, and I wondered if that was on purpose?"

Matt blinked at that. Foggy was drawing him as Daredevil? What the hell?

Foggy seemed equally flummoxed. 

"Um... yeah, I suppose," he finally said, leaving it at that, as if that wasn't a bombshell.

Matt wasn't going to let that lie.

"Foggy, what the hell?"

"I don't know, I just... I met you doing cosplay, yeah? And it was really good, and I kind of got that as my mental image of Daredevil, right? So I drew that one picture that was actually meant to be inspired by you, like I'd seen you that night. And that was gonna be that. But the image kind of stuck. And I figured that you couldn't see it, and nobody knew what you looked like in real life anyway, so literally only I would ever know and it didn't matter. I didn't think... I know it's weird... if it's too weird I could take it down?"

Matt raced to assure Foggy that it was fine, no, it's not a problem, he was just surprised because he didn't know, but carry on, by all means.

"Oh, okay. Cool. I'm glad that you're cool with it, then." Foggy's relief was all too clear.

He _was_ cool with it, Matt realized. He was flattered, of course, but on a deeper level he also just genuinely thought it was cool that his best friend was deliberately drawing him as Daredevil. _Huh_. Another thing to psychoanalyse later.

It only struck Matt as an afterthought that hey, maybe Daredevil fanart that actually looked identifiably like him wasn't such a great idea.

Matt was an idiot.

Just as he was trying to find a way to make a U-turn and ask Foggy to take them down after all, for reasons that he couldn't explain but totally weren't to do with him actually being Daredevil, Karen intervened.

"Well, I think it's sweet. And only a little weird. I just thought you ought to know." 

She said this in an innocent tone, but with a hint of something mischevious that made Matt wonder what she thought was going on. Surely she wasn't implying...

Then Foggy decided to order another cappuccino and Matt focussed back on the conversation, pleased to have some excuse not to have to follow up on that line of thought.

"Yeah, I think I'll get something too."

The evening wore on and that was that.

Only it wasn't. 

Now, whenever there was a still moment, Matt would catch Foggy looking at him, as if sizing him up. Now that he knew what was going on, he recognized the signs and stayed still a touch longer than really necessary. After all, if Foggy was working on some new fanart, with Matt as his semi-unsuspecting model, it was the least Matt could do to pose properly. 

He still intended to ask Foggy to take them down... it just wasn't the right time. Maybe he'd bring it up tomorrow?

_Yeah, you tell yourself that_, the tiny voice scoffed. _By the way, how's your fic going?_

His fic, truth be told, was going miserably. 

He'd been writing something where Daredevil fell for a young, talented OC, fresh out of art school and starting out in the big city. The OC was a sensitive, artistic type, full of idealism and whimsy, and Daredevil became his muse.

The problem was, after the whole thing with the fanart, he was struggling not to see Foggy in it. It was ridiculous, be told himself. He'd started writing it _way_ before he knew about all that, and there were considerable points of divergence anyway. The OC liked classical music, after all, and one of his defining character traits was his hatred of small spaces and confinement. And he drank wine. As far as Matt knew, none of those applied to Foggy. He didn't think. Okay, he was willing to admit that the OC was a little bit like Foggy. A lot like Foggy, actually. But still, he hadn't known about the fanart at the time.

He wondered, though, whether he hadn't known about it, deep down. Perhaps it had just been Karen mentioning it that had crystallized it all in his mind. Maybe she really _did_ know what she was doing. 

Either way it was ridiculous, because he couldn't publish it now, not now that Foggy knew he knew about the fanart. It would just be weird - Foggy would know that Matt was writing fanfiction about him.

_Like you know about his fanart?_

The sly little voice just didn't shut up, did it?

And okay, maybe they were both inspired by each other. That was just a testament to their friendship, right? Good friends should inspire each other. If they were writing each other love letters through the medium of fanworks, well, that was just because they appreciated each other as people, you know?

In any case, Matt persisted with the fic. He had to finish it now, even if he didn't post it, just to prove a point to himself. _I can write about Foggy without it being weird. I can._

He wondered if Foggy felt the same way.

Days turned into weeks and Matt kept thinking about Foggy drawing him, and utterly failing to ask him to stop. 

It was ridiculous, really, but he kept wondering if, while drawing Matt, Foggy might not put the pieces together. If he might not think, oh, my friend who I use as my mental image for Daredevil, and who keeps coming in with suspicious injuries and who has a running joke with me about Daredevil being blind, just like he is, might actually, possibly, potentially be the real deal? 

Actually, it wasn't ridiculous at all. All it would take was one passing thought - _huh, I never really thought it before, but Matt _could_ be Daredevil_ \- and all the small things would begin to make sense. Matt's general lack of concern for Daredevil's wellbeing after a particularly alarming news story. The fact that Matt had a professional-looking cosplay that first night, but hadn't known what shipping was. Daredevil reading their blog.

Hell, Matt was surprised Foggy hadn't figured it out already.

If it had been anybody else coming so close to revealing his secret, he'd have cut and run. Burned all his bridges, ghosted them, disappeared from their life without a trace.

A childhood friend? Definitely. Marci at work? Almost certainly. Even if it had been Karen who was so close to working out his secret, he'd have dropped out of her life, albeit reluctantly. That had surprised him, but thinking about it he realized that yes, if push came to shove he'd distance himself from Karen too.

But not Foggy. Never Foggy.

It was strange, Matt had lived his whole life and had never needed anybody in it as much as he needed Foggy now. 

It was a vulnerability, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to care.

Life was good - life _with Foggy_ was good - and Matt was damned if he'd let anything get in the way of that. If that meant risking Foggy finding out... well, so be it.

And there it was. The cliff edge again. Matt had edged right up to it and peeked right over, and now he was getting that familiar urge to jump.

_Just tell him. If you're willing to let him find out, then why not just tell him?_

It floored him for a moment. Was he seriously considering it?

There were so many valid reasons not to. It would endanger Foggy, for one. People might go after him to get information on Matt, and that was unacceptable. It might all go wrong, and Foggy would hate Matt for keeping such a huge secret from him for so long. It could be the end of the trust and friendship that had built up between them. Or, and this possibility was almost worse, it could just change things between them. What if it made things weird? What if Foggy stuck around, but closed up? What if Matt never heard his laugh again, never felt his nervous energy as they worked on the first draft of a fic together? And anyway, as soon as he told Foggy, Foggy would be complicit. He knew from the legal meta that Foggy had misgivings about Daredevil's actions - could he make Foggy complicit in that? And he'd have to force Foggy to keep a secret from Karen, which just seemed wrong somehow. Somebody as open and lovely and friendly as Foggy had no business keeping secrets like that. 

No, he couldn't do it, he told himself. He shouldn't even be contemplating it.

And yet, as the weeks wore on, he found himself playing devil's advocate - _ha_, he thought mirthlessly, _devil's advocate _\- and began thinking up arguments for revealing himself.

It would be the right thing to do. Friends don't lie to each other.

Things wouldn't be weird. He knew Foggy too well to truly believe that.

He'd have somebody to talk about it all with.

It was insidious. At first, they were just idle thoughts, but after a while they seemed more solid, and then Matt started believing his own arguments, and before long Matt was thinking of ways he could do it, almost without realising that he had, in fact, decided to do it. 

The day came, and Matt decided to do it. It was a spontaneous thing. Foggy had messaged him mid-afternoon, wondering if they should go out in the park and sit for a while to soak up the sunshine. Summer was beginning, and Matt was aware that he was probably unhealthily pale. 

Karen wasn't going to be there, Foggy had said, since she was visiting family upstate, but Foggy was looking forward to seeing Matt anyway, it would be like old times.

Matt frowned at the phrasing there. Did Foggy miss it being just the two of them? He couldn't remember the last time Karen wasn't around, and it was true, he _was_ excited to spend some time alone with Foggy.

He'd do it today, he decided, surprised at his own resolve. He'd tell Foggy today, and his fate would be sealed.

All afternoon he was on tenterhooks. How would Foggy react? What would he actually say? Should he offer to leave Foggy alone afterwards? Or would that send the wrong message? 

Marci was giving him a look again, he just knew it. 

5 o'clock came and went and before he knew it, Matt was wandering along to the park, holding two coffees. His hands were shaking, and it was all he could do not to drop them.

He found Foggy pretty quickly.

"Hey! Foggy?"

"Yeah, man. You brought coffee?"

"Sure did. I reckoned you might appreciate a pick-me-up."

Foggy took one of the coffees gratefully and clasped his hands round it. It was sunny, but colder out than it looked. Matt suspected that Foggy was regretting not bringing a jacket.

"Listen-" Foggy started out, but Matt interrupted him.

"Can we talk?"

It sounded stupid and cliché, and Matt hated it immediately, but Foggy didn't seem to mind.

"Yeah, of course. You know I'm always listening, Matt. Whatever it is."

Matt took a deep breath, tryin in vain to stop his voice trembling.

"Well, you see, I need to tell you something. Something about me that I haven't been entirely honest or open about -"

Foggy's heart was racing and his next words took the breath from Matt's lungs.

"It's okay, I know."

_Wait what? _

"Me too."

Matt barely had time to frown, and then Foggy was kissing him, and nothing else mattered.


	14. Chapter 14

The first few days after Foggy kissed him, Matt sometimes struggled to believe it had happened. 

Rational thought had immediately shut down, notions of revealing his secret long since gone. There had just been Foggy, and Foggy's breath on his face and Foggy's awkward hesitation, as is he were wondering whether or not he'd made a mistake. Matt soon reassured him that that wasn't the case.

It was quite a few minutes before Matt's brain started working again, and by the time it reached the level of full, coherent thoughts, Matt and Foggy were drawing quite a bit of attention. Matt couldn't really bring himself to care.

In the course of the next couple of hours, Matt came to several realizations. A lot of things suddenly became a lot clearer, as if his emotions had been playing on a radio that had only just been tuned to the right station. 

First of all, and most importantly, he was in love with Foggy Nelson, and had been for some time. He wasn't entirely sure how he'd been able to ignore it before, but now it was undeniable, and every fibre of Matt's being knew it and wanted to sing it from the rooftops.

A lot of Foggy's behaviour started making more sense too, and the more Matt thought back on their interactions over the last few months, the more he wondered how he hadn't worked it out sooner. Foggy's nervous tension, the long moments spent watching Matt, the fanart, for God's sake. In what world was that a platonic thing to do? Matt really was an idiot sometimes.

Only he wasn't sure he was such an idiot, because at least part of him - that small, annoying voice - had absolutely known the truth, hadn't it? Matt resolved to listen to it more in future, but was equally aware that he probably wouldn't.

Of course, he knew he would still have to tell Foggy sometime. If it had been unfair on Foggy before, it was doubly unfair now. The thought of telling Foggy made him feel sick to the stomach, perhaps more so than before. He had so much to lose now. But all the same, it had to be done. He no longer had the luxury of choice.

But all this was an afterthought, and Matt soon banished it from his mind. He was done overthinking. Overthinking had only gotten him deeper into denial, and he was determined to stop it. He supposed that Foggy was probably good for him in that respect, since around him he found it hard to think at all.

The big reveal would happen. For now, Matt was content just to stay with Foggy.

He couldn't tell you what they did that evening. It passed by in a happy blur.

In years to come, he supposed, he would be able to connect the dots, joining the individual moments into a coherent narrative, but for now he just had a few disjointed memories, preserved like snapshots in his mind. The sound of Foggy's laugh, joyful and a little giddy. The feel of Foggy's face, and the taste of Foggy's lips and the smell of Foggy's hair. A general awareness of Foggy's presence next to him in the early hours of the morning, snoring ever so gently and leaning into Matt's arms. 

For now, Matt was happy just to hold onto what he had. 

The next few days were a happy blur. Matt had a glow to him, apparently, as Marci was kind enough to point out the next day at work.

"I'd say I don't know what got into you, but I have a few ideas," she teased. Matt just laughed. _Let her speculate._

Karen, of course, was overjoyed, reacting with joy and a suspiciously practiced surprise. Matt wondered how long she'd known, and precisely how obvious the two of them had been. 

"Oh, I'm so pleased for you!" she gushed. "Just don't go getting too mushy on me!"

Matt blushed, suddenly aware of Foggy's hand resting on his back, the slight incline of his own head, leaning subtly towards Foggy's.

He realized with a sudden and startling clarity, listening to Karen's excitement as she insisted that they go out to a bar to celebrate, that he would have to tell her too. Maybe not for a while, and he could talk it over with Foggy first, but it would have to happen. Their duo was going to have to be a trio. Just a few days ago this would have set a whole load of alarm bells off in his head, but now it just felt right.

One bridge at a time, he thought, though, as they planned their evening. He still needed to tell Foggy. He'd give himself tonight, but tomorrow it was time. _Tomorrow_, he repeated to himself, trying not to think too hard about it. Not yet.

The night flew by, and Matt wasn't sure when he'd last laughed so much. His sides hurt from laughing and the world was pleasantly fuzzy and he was sat there with his two favorite people in the world, and then he was going home with Foggy, and everything was _perfect_.

It was enough, Matt thought. If he told Foggy now, and Foggy called the whole thing off, it would have been enough. Sure, Matt almost forgot how to breathe when he thought of life without Foggy, and a cold, sickening dread began to seep into the pit of his stomach. But at least he would have these memories. It was enough, and he would survive, if it came down to it.

He wondered if there had been a point at which Foggy had become so crucial to his continued survival, or whether he had been doomed from that very first meeting.

As if he could read Matt's mind, Foggy spoke.

"You remember when we met?"

How could Matt forget?

"Of course."

Foggy let out a slight chuckle, his breath tickling Matt's cheek. A moment passed before he spoke again.

"I lied to you, back then, you know?"

Matt frowned, but Foggy carried on.

"I said I'd gone for a walk, that I needed the fresh air. That wasn't true, though. Truth was, I saw you out my window, and I thought, I should go talk to him. It was the strangest thing. There was me, just about to drop off to sleep, and all of a sudden I was outside, talking to this random stranger in a Daredevil costume. I don't even know why I did it, you know?"

"I'm glad you did," Matt murmured.

"Yeah, me too," Foggy answered. " But I was just thinking about that. Because I almost didn't do it. I almost turned over and went back to sleep. I just keep thinking about it, how lucky I am that I didn't. It scares me, I guess, how close I came to not knowing you."

Matt didn't know how to respond to that.

A few seconds passed.

"Anyway," Foggy continued, "I just thought you should know the truth. I saw you out there, and you were just..."

He trailed off, lost in the memory.

Matt knew that this was the time to do it. Not later, not tomorrow, not next week. 

He took a trembling breath, rehearsing his lines. _I lied too. I've lied to you all this time, and broke your trust and you've only ever been wonderful and trusting and open with me, and I am so, so sorry. I love you and I am sorry._

But it wasn't necessary.

With the words still on the tip of his tongue, Matt felt the moment it all came together in Foggy's mind. The sudden tension in his shoulders, the spike in his heart rate, the creaking of the sofa springs as Foggy turned to look at him.

And worst of all, the tiny inhale. The same damn sound that started it all.

Neither of them was breathing.

Matt could hear his heartbeat in his ears.

He waited for the inevitable rejection.

Foggy's voice trembled and broke.

"God, Matt, you were so beautiful in the moonlight."

Foggy hadn't said anything, but in that instant, Matt knew. Foggy had worked it out, Foggy knew and Foggy didn't care. 

And then Matt was crying, and Foggy was crying, and through the tears Matt was laughing in relief. Relief that Foggy hadn't rejected him, relief that he no longer had to lie, relief that he had fallen in love with such a perfect, amazing, remarkable man. Foggy laughed too, and it was the same imperfect, beautiful laugh that Matt had fallen in love with, all the way back then.

And he knew that tomorrow there would be time for questions, and explanations and possibly apologies. But all of that could wait. For now, Foggy was lying in his arms, and all was right with the world.

The moonlight shone down outside the window, the city rumbled on and Matt Murdock smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well there we go, guys! Thank you all so much for your lovely comments - they really do mean the world to me ^-^ hope you enjoyed!


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